It would be downplaying it to say that 2020 has been a whirlwind of a year.
Many digital marketing companies packed up their office spaces in February, and employees — from the C-Suite to entry-level — had to adopt a new working style many were not accustomed to.
While few digital workers were previously able to work from home, the industry — and the world as a whole— had to adjust to full-time remote working during the coronavirus pandemic. Luckily, as SEOs and digital marketers, we have great experience in pivoting and adjusting our working styles and strategies, regardless of what challenges are thrown our way. It comes with the job.
Throughout this blog post, I’ll discuss the various tactics I’ve seen work incredibly well for our clients and in the wider industry as a whole, in addition to advice for increasing productivity and overall happiness with the change of scenery to full-time working from home. I hope that this post provides ideas and potential projects SEOs can work on in-house or with clients, and that my tips for working from home also help you take a step back, unwind, and increase your productivity and work/life balance.
SEO tactics that worked extremely well this year
“Low hanging fruit” initiatives
With the influx of users sitting at home and spending more time online this year, a strategy we employed across our clients was to tackle pages that ranked in positions 5-9, or 11-14, and optimize existing content to increase visibility in the SERP.
These optimizations consisted of simple, yet effective changes that match and cater to the user’s search intent. As it's been proven that people scan as few as the first two words of a title tag, the importance of having an effective title tag that concisely describes the content on the page cannot be overlooked. Title tag tweaks, H1, and meta description updates are some of the ways that our clients’ rankings have improved on the first page, and also won Answers Box and People Also Ask results.
Above is an example of a keyword ranking increase for one of our clients in the data intelligence industry. Through metadata optimizations and targeting People Also Ask questions, we’ve seen rank increase from 13 to 6 within this year.
Targeting “People Also Ask” questions
We’ve found that with increased searches in 2020, users are asking more questions overall and are looking for in-depth and valuable answers. Google’s People Also Ask SERP feature is the most effective way for companies to answer regularly asked questions, and drive more traffic to their site.
PAA questions have been an effective strategy in 2020 to increase traffic and increase brand awareness to our clients’ sites. The main way we targeted landing in the People Also Ask section for clients was to tailor new and existing content around answering these user’s questions. Tools such as AlsoAsked.com were vital in identifying these questions, and creative writers were extremely beneficial in attacking this SERP feature.
New content creation plans + updating existing content
Similar to the success I’ve seen with a PAA-focused strategy in 2020, another initiative we’ve taken with clients that has had success this year is a holistic new content creation plan. These plans focus on a dedicated and consistent approach to creating content, based on content gaps our clients were missing out on and had an opportunity to attack.
This holistic approach covered the following:
Priority topics that should be written as soon as possible. These new page recommendations entail targeting valuable keywords that have the highest potential ranking opportunity, in addition to topics that competitors are covering.
Content topic groups that display the full list of related keywords for our clients and their competitors in the space. Every keyword is categorized by an overarching topic and bucketed into a broader topic. These keywords within each content topic group are targeted overall with newly created content.
Recommend posting frequency and competitive insights where we highlight how often a client should be publishing various types of content relative to their industry. The posting frequency is formulated by identifying a client’s top industry and search competitors, analyzing their posting frequency, and creating recommendations appropriately.
Content types where we think out of the traditional blog content box and recommend different formats, such as videos, infographics, and interviews (pending each client’s needs).
Keywords to avoid – while in SEO we understand that building out a primary keyword’s hub and spokes by targeting relevant secondary keywords is beneficial, we want to ensure that a client isn’t overusing mapped keywords on various blog or website pages. To prevent keyword cannibalization on these pages, we set guidelines that focus on which keywords to avoid in the beginning of title and H1 tags.
Placement guide – many different clients in various industries have multiple places where they can post content (blogs, resource libraries, press rooms, and so on). Through this guide, we assist clients in understanding where specific content should be posted on their site.
While the above tactics proved to be beneficial for our clients, the traffic gains and increased value we provided would not be possible if our working situations were subpar. So, next I’m going to dive into some work from home tips that have helped increase my productivity and helped me grow as a remote worker.
Full-time work from home: an SEO’s perspective and learnings
While many digital marketers were used to virtual meetings while working in the office, some were left feeling excited — and others overwhelmed — by the idea of unexpectedly working from home full-time for months on end.
Workers around the globe were unable to leave the house during lockdowns, and had all the time in the world to focus on a new working style. This led to growth and experimentation for myself and many others in the space, so I’d like to share the strategies I found valuable.
1. Setting boundaries for work/life balance
Wake up at 8:00 a.m. Shower. Eat breakfast. Read the news. Log in and get your day started. Work for eight hours. Clock out. Send emails after hours. Think about projects for the next day...
And so on. It’s easy to fall into the routine — or trap — of feeling “always clocked in” when you work from home full-time. As we aren’t leaving a physical location (and our work laptop) at the office, some of us feel the need to constantly check communications, emails, and other work that can really wait until the next day.
One strategy I found beneficial was to have a section in my home dedicated to work and nothing else. Personally, this is my homemade desk – I use my dual monitors for projects, meetings, and firing off emails throughout the day. After hours, I’ll leave my work items on my desk, and refrain from using them or checking emails and internal messages until the next day, setting a defined boundary between my personal time and my work time.
2. Productivity breaks
The aspect of work I struggle with the most is batching out my work strategically. If I’m conducting a technical audit for a client, I start a project and power through as much of it in one sitting as possible. Having a strong focus is always beneficial during your work hours — you can think more effectively, make strong decisions, and piece together problems to formulate a solution that helps your client or your company.
While you’re providing strategic insights for an incredible content recommendation, or have uncovered technical problems on your client’s site, your shoulders are aching from being hunched over, your eyes are strained from looking at a screen for over three hours, and you’ve forgotten to eat lunch.
I find it extremely beneficial to schedule breaks for myself throughout the day. Go for a walk. Read a book. Stare at a wall. Take 15 minutes of your day to stand up, stretch, move away from a screen and unwind. Your body and brain will thank you for the rest, and you’ll be able to regain focus on a project, and maybe even come up with an out-of-the-box solution you haven’t thought of before.
Summary
Overall, this year has forced us to get out of our comfort zones and try new things — both at home and within our work. And as SEOs, we’re constantly growing and evolving, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t along the way.
With the way we’ve adapted in 2020 to produce meaningful insights in the SEO realm, I’m confident that our industry and the professionals within it will remain ready to take on whatever the future brings. What strategies and tactics have worked for you this year? Let me know in the comments.
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Your brand has probably used content marketing to generate awareness and engagement, but have you tried tangential content?
In this brand new episode of Whiteboard Friday, Amanda Milligan of Fractl is here to walk you through what tangential content is, why it's useful, and how to create it.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi. My name is Amanda Milligan. I'm the Marketing Director at Fractl, an agency that helps brands build their organic growth. Today I'm going to talk to you about one of the strategies we use for our clients, and it's called tangential content. If you haven't heard of it, don't worry.
Odds are you might have already done it and not even known. Today we're going to talk about what it is, why you should include it in your strategy, and how to come up with content ideas that are tangential.
What is tangential content?
So to start, what is tangential content? It's not used a ton, this phrase, but we and some others I think have kind of adopted it because there wasn't a ton of language around it.
So the word "tangential" means lightly touching or peripheral. So not really as related is basically what the word means. Tangential content then is content that is not directly related to your product or service offering. In other words, it's not very on brand. Maybe the opposite of tangential content is very topical content.
So we create both topical and tangential content at Fractl, but they each serve different purposes, which is what I'll get into. But just to give you an example of the difference between the two, down here I have two different articles you can create for let's say a dating website. So a topical article for a dating website might be here are seven profile red flags to watch out for.
So the reason that's topical is because we're actually talking about a dating site or a dating app, and so is this article talking directly about things to watch out for on a dating profile. So it's really relevant to the actual offering that you're making as a brand, and it's helping even users. So it's targeting your direct audience and then also some people who might use other apps.
Tangential content in this category might look like, "couples voted these seven places as the most romantic cities in America". So now we're not talking about dating apps anymore or any dating websites. We're talking about partners and relationships. It's still relevant in the grand scheme of this niche, but it's not directly related to the product or service.
So this is just an example of how topical and tangential can look a little different. Another example I like to use is for Porch.com. They are a home improvement website. We've done all kinds of content for them that fall in both buckets. So for topical content, we've done the cost of home improvement over the lifespan of living in a house, and we've done tangential content like how to cook with your family or backyard games or something.
So I'll explain a little bit more over here how to come up with ideas like that. But you see this all the time in marketing even if you haven't recognized it or known what to call it. We actually did a study very recently where we looked at the finalists for the Content Marketing Awards. We excluded agencies, but we looked at a bunch of brands, and we saw that, I think, at least 6 out of 10 of those brands that we examined had tangential content on their blogs.
So it's a pretty common practice, and whether people even recognize it or not, it can be really effective.
Why create tangential content?
So why bother with content that isn't entirely on brand? A lot of people would hesitate and say, "I want to do stuff that only makes sense for our primary audience, that will convert users, or build a really relevant audience."
Link building
But there are some incredible benefits for tangential content. First of all, SEO people love the link building aspect. So if you're interested in getting some of the best links you've ever gotten, really high quality links from some of the best media publications, we haven't found a better way to do it than using tangential content. Why?
Because when you're doing something that's not directly related to your brand, you're able to reach a more general audience, really tap into compelling ideas that will appeal to more people and thus more publications. So it increases your chances of getting that media coverage.
Brand awareness
The second is brand awareness. For similar reasons, if you're able to get that content out there and appeal to more people, that means more people are seeing your brand.
So what we do at Fractl is essentially come up with these types of ideas. We build an entire content project around a new dataset or we run a survey or we collect new information based on this tangential idea, and then we pitch it to the media. So when you have this new study or this new report done by your brand and you get it covered on some of the top national media sources, that's pretty incredible brand awareness, not to mention authority, because when your brand is mentioned as so-and-so study shows this, you're framed in a really authoritative way, usually toward the top of the article as the source of the information that this publication has deemed worthy of talking about.
It's pretty incredible. So that's kind of what I'm talking about here — national media coverage. Additionally, if you're doing tangential content on your blog and you're trying to get more organic traffic and more presence in the SERPs, that is another way that you can really build out the top of the funnel marketing efforts that you have.
So if you're kind of zooming out and thinking how can I reach people in this industry who might not already have decided that they want to purchase our product or service but still get our name out there, then you can target more tangential, top of the funnel keywords and start ranking in the SERPs to get more awareness. So these are really incredible benefits.
Social shares
Finally, social shares, because, as I'll get to, when you come up with tangential ideas, like I said, you have much more room to play around and be creative, which generally means you can come up with ideas that are much more compelling and emotionally resonant, and those are the types of ideas that get all kinds of social shares. People want to send it to their friends. They want to react to it on social, etc.
So really some great stuff here. Whether you're coming at it from a brand perspective or an SEO perspective, you can get a lot out of doing this type of content.
How to create tangential content
So finally, how? The first thing I tell people is to zoom out. If you have typically only been creating topical content in the past, you're probably not used to thinking about your greater industry outside of your value proposition.
1. Zoom out
So I encourage people to start by literally just thinking, "What is our greater category?" So if you work as car insurance, then automobiles or transportation even. It's like, "What would the top category in a publication be that fits your brand?" So for this example, I put time management software.
So if you are a SaaS company and you are time management software, maybe your general topic would be work and productivity. So that would be the general zooming out. Once you've zoomed out, then you want to think laterally. This is how we describe it.
What I mean by that is: What are all of the subtopics that fall under the zoomed out category? What are all of the other things we can talk about that aren't directly related to our brand? So for work/productivity, I wrote down some examples of what that could be. Sorry, not work/productivity, but work and productivity. It could be either one. So just the workplace, that's the general gist.
So maybe it's about your salary, your salary aspirations, are salaries fair across different companies, within companies. Anything salary related, maybe that would get published on financial publications in addition to ones that cover the workplace or business publications. Office gossip, that's something a lot of people can relate to, and you can pitch publications that are more on the lifestyle side of things.
That's an example of getting very generally appealing. Anybody who's worked in an office, even if they haven't participated in office gossip themselves, probably knows that it has happened or that it's caused issues or what have you. So you can go that route. Work/life balance. We're recording this in the time of COVID. That's even more applicable now. You can get a really timeliness factor to it.
But when you talk about productivity, work/life balance becomes a question a lot of the time. It's how can you be more productive without sacrificing your personal life? Dating coworkers. Again, you're taking a totally different ... You're combining the work niche and relationship dating lifestyle niche. This could be something that even the dating site could even do.
They can talk about dating coworkers. It's a tangential idea that actually applies to multiple industries. Finally, I have up here job satisfaction. So this is more based on the work side of things, how good do you feel about your job, are you looking for another one. Just getting a sense of how people feel. All of these things qualify as tangential content ideas for a time management software company.
So I wanted to illustrate that because it shows how many things are now within the realm of possibility for you that you might not have realized before. When you can play around with this many types of ideas, you can get very creative with the methodologies and the things that you explore. It gets pretty fun I have to be honest.
2. Consider emotion
So down here, and honestly this section deserves its own whiteboard, after you've done this and maybe you've written down 70 ideas based on, oh wow, we're able to zoom out and think about all kinds of stuff, so much comes to mind, think about emotion. Most things that do well have an emotional impact on you.
Even if it's how-to content, you might be thinking that's usually pretty straightforward and dry. If you're helping somebody and they're getting value out of it and they're reading it like, "Oh, thank God, I was looking for an answer to this," that is an emotional reaction. So you have to be thinking about how emotionally resonant these ideas are.
So part of how we score our ideas or prioritize them or measure their likelihood of succeeding is to think about the emotional components. You can kind of see how these play into these ideas. Salary aspirations, people tie a lot of their worth at work to their salaries. That's a pretty emotional thing. Dating and gossip at work, obviously those social dynamics can get pretty intense.
Work/life balance, again now you're talking about your family and your relationships with people. Job satisfaction, similarly to salary aspirations, that can really impact your life. So then I actually recommend to people, when they have ideas, to literally write down all these emotions and see what is going to be part of like the essence of the actual idea.
Then, when you're able to say, "Okay, this idea is really going to emotionally resonate with people. They're going to see themselves in this. They're going to be really interested in the results. Then you can start honing in on: What are the different methodologies we can use? What kind of data is available or that we have internally or that we can find or collect that can illustrate this, get at some of those truths that we don't have access to right now?
So that's a great place to start if you have kind of questions. Like if you have office gossip and you're like, "I wonder how many people do feel like they participated in that? I wonder how many people have actually had some kind of ramification at work because of that or have suffered themselves?" I don't know the answer. So if you want to run a survey about that, that could be really interesting to people.
So zoom out. Think about all the different types of subtopics you can talk about now that you have zoomed out. Then consider the emotional factors of all those ideas and then start sorting based on that. See where you can collect data to kind of fulfill those types of ideas. Once you're onto something like that, a lot of the time your intuition will tell you.
If you find it interesting, if you want to know the answer, certainly give it a shot executing it. Then you can pitch it to publications. So that is the short version of how we do all this. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. You can find me on Twitter @millanda. But that is the gist of tangential content.
It is extremely effective. Give this a shot. Whether it's on your blog or if you do decide you want to pitch it to media publications and go for those links, I highly recommend it. Thank you so much for watching.
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Many marketing channels are interruptive by nature, meant to divert attention away from a task, be it reading and replying to emails, perusing articles online, browsing social feeds, listening to the radio, watching TV — the list goes on. SEO is one of the only marketing channels (the only?) that serves to first deliver something, instead of asking before delivering. At its core, SEO is used to deliver helpful content to people actively searching for it. And, it can (and should!) be used to reach target audiences at the local and national level.
According to Google, searches for local places without the use of “near me” have grown 150% over the last two years — showing that, when people search, they’re increasingly expecting local results. This creates a powerful opportunity for those organizations primed to take advantage of it. Through the “search and deliver” dynamic of SEO, nonprofit marketers have the opportunity to reach local audiences that indicate their interest and engagement through their search behaviors. Nonprofit marketers can leverage this to engage supporters, drive donations, and share their nonprofit’s mission with the world.
So, how do you make the most of local SEO? Read on for local SEO tactics you can try today.
Before we dive in, it’s important to first understand what primary factors impact your nonprofit organization’s local search engine rankings. This can be distilled into four primary areas: relevance, distance, trust, and prominence.
Relevance: How well your website matches the search term a user searches for. If Google determines your business is an educational charity, then your website has a higher likelihood to rank for the term “education charity” in comparison to another business Google determines is a health nonprofit.
Distance: The proximity of your business to the searcher. As Google learns more about you and your whereabouts via the ever present homing beacon in your pocket — your smartphone — distance has become a top (if not the top) ranking factor. Essentially, the search engine result page (SERP) for “health nonprofit” in Portland, Oregon will be completely different from the result in Seattle, Washington. Heck, the SERP in the Portland ZIP code of 97219 will be different than the Portland ZIP code of 97209.
Trust: How trustworthy Google thinks your business is, based on its reputation. This could be determined by your review quantity and ratings, or the number of high-authority websites that link to your website. Quantity and quality of reviews, quality and quantity of linking domains, domain age, and quality of website content are a few ways that Google can determine trustworthiness.
Prominence: How often your business appears across the web. Examples could be a mention of your nonprofit online (by a local news outlet, for example) or a business listing on directory sites like Great Nonprofits or Charity Navigator.
Some of these are easier to impact than others — you can’t change the distance of your business to the searcher — so let’s dive in to five local SEO tactics you can implement today.
1. Create or claim a Google My Business page — it’s free!
Are you convinced? I hope so. Creating and/or claiming a Google My Business (GMB) page is a great first step in leveraging Google — and it's completely free. When you create a GMB page, your nonprofit is listed in Google Maps, your odds of getting listed in Google’s local 3-pack improve, and you’re more likely to improve your overall local search rankings, thereby ensuring that more people searching for your nonprofit (or nonprofits like yours) find you.
By creating a Google My Business(GMB) page, you tackle all four ranking factors outlined above, so if you can only do one of the tactics outlined in this blog post, do this one.
If you already have GMB pages claimed and completed for all your business locations, high-five! Go ahead and skip to #2.
Before you start claiming GMB pages, the first thing you’ll want to do is collect and organize accurate location data, or “NAP” (name, address, phone number), for all of your nonprofit locations. A few things to keep in mind when it comes to NAP:
Always use your real-world business name. The name you list here should match the sign on your door, your marketing collateral, etc.
Always use your real-world address. Don’t include information in the address line to describe the location; stick to your mailing address.
Use a local phone number whenever possible vs. a call center helpline.
Bonus tip:Depending on how many locations you have, keeping track of location data can get unwieldy fast. If you have more than a few locations, I highly recommend you (or someone in your organization) create and manage a single source, like a spreadsheet, that has all your business’s location data centralized and organized in one place.
After you organize your location data, you’ll want to go through and claim and/or update the Google My Business pages for all your locations. Here are step-by step instructions from Google. Things to keep in mind when completing your GMB listing:
Include a primary business category to describe what your business does to Google and to the people searching. If multiple categories describe your business, choose the category that most closely matches your ranking goals as your primary category. Then, you can add up to 9 additional categories for a total of 10. For help selecting categories, check out our blog post on How to Choose a Google My Business Category.
Select attributes for your business. There are a variety of attributes available for you to share more about your business, such as accessibility attributes, whether your nonprofit identifies as Black-owned or women-led, LGTBQ+ friendly, etc. The list of available attributes is pretty extensive, but select only those that are applicable, relevant, and accurate.
Write a thoughtful business description. You have 750 characters to describe what your nonprofit does and what makes it unique.
Include keywords in the business description. Focus on 1-2 high-value keywords that are relevant to your nonprofit, and avoid keyword stuffing (the unnecessary repetition of keywords throughout on-page SEO elements).
Add photos! According to Google, businesses with photos receive 42% more requests for directions and 35% more click-through to websites. When selecting photos, choose authentic, high-quality photos that showcase your nonprofit.
Select a profile photo to note your preferred photo choice for search results. This isn’t foolproof — there is no guarantee that your profile photo will appear first — but it does indicate to Google which photo you prefer.
2. Claim your local business listings
The places you can create a business listing online are growing exponentially, from social networking sites to specialized, vertical-specific directory sites that allow people to research, compare, and share reviews of businesses, products and services. These online destinations present marketers with local citation opportunities — opportunities to get your nonprofit in front of more people.
In the past, amassing a large quantity of citations was a favored tactic when increasing local search rankings. Now, as factors impacting local search rankings evolve, the verdict is out on whether local citation quantity remains so important. Claiming and managing your online business listings may help your nonprofit rank higher for local search queries and it will help more people discover your nonprofit online. You will reach a larger audience by creating complete, accurate, and engaging experiences everywhere your target audience searches.
Reputation is a valuable asset for any business, and that’s especially true for nonprofit organizations, where donations are given and sponsorships extended based on the organization's reputation for doing good.
In addition to the brand benefits, an active review strategy has the added value of increasing your nonprofit’s online visibility. Review quantity, recency, and quality are factors that help Google determine how trustworthy your website is, which is one of the ranking factors we covered earlier. Google has said high-quality, positive reviews can improve your business visibility. A few things to keep in mind when it comes to reviews:
Make it easy for people to leave reviews. You can create and share a short url for customers to share reviews of your nonprofit.
Solicit honest reviews. Sometimes all you have to do is ask! According to a 2019 study, 76% of people who were asked to leave a review do so.
Don’t solicit reviews in bulk — This is against Google’s policies. Google does not provide a definition of what they mean by “bulk”, but typically this refers to sending many requests at one time via an automated platform vs. a one-on-one request.
Don’t pay for reviews. This practice is also against Google’s policies.
Respond to reviews, even negative ones. When you reply to a review, it shows that you value the feedback, plus, conversion rates (clicks to call, clicks to directions, etc.) increase when companies engage with and reply to reviews.
Keyword research, or choosing the “right” keywords to target, is a foundational aspect of SEO because it provides a roadmap you can use to optimize existing content, and produce new content in the hopes of ranking higher in SERPs. It requires an understanding of your target audience and how they’re searching for content online. The end-goal is to determine:
The specific terms your audience is using to search online.
The number of searches for a specific keyword over a given time period, or search volume.
What your target audience is expecting to find when they search for that term, or the searcher’s intent.
When targeting keywords, you want to focus on high-volume, high-intent keywords that are relevant to your nonprofit and that you could realistically rank for. This only begins to scratch the surface — keyword research is a BIG topic! — so if you’re ready to dive in to keyword research, I highly recommend that you check out The Keyword Research Master Guide.
Then, once you’ve identified your target keywords, remember to pick terms that best describe your nonprofit and include them in the business descriptions of your Google My Business and other local business listings.
5. Conduct on-page optimization
On-page optimization is the process of optimizing specific pages on a website for the keywords you want to rank for. This includes on-page SEO ranking factors like the content on the page itself, or the source code such as page title and meta description. Through on-page seo, you help Google accurately determine what your business is and what it does, and how relevant your website is to what people search for.
For example, if you have the term “global education” in a page URL, in the page title, description, and in the content of the page, Google is more likely to determine that the page is about global education and, your page will be more likely to rank for that term.
A few tips to keep in mind when it comes to on-page SEO:
Develop E-A-T content. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google uses this framework to determine high-quality content, and high-quality correlates with higher search engine rankings. There are a variety of E-A-T tactics you can leverage — for a run-down I suggest you watch E-A-T and the Quality Raters’ Guidelines — but in the end, it adds up to demonstrating your business’s expertise and legitimacy to Google.
Intentional keyword usage. It’s still important to include a target keyword in the title tag, description, headers, and through the content of the page, while avoiding keyword stuffing.
Don’t forget about page load speed. Page speed is a search engine ranking factor and refers to how quickly your page loads for a user. You can use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to see how your web pages stack up.
Avoid keyword cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on your website are all competing for the same keyword. You put yourself in the position where you’re competing with yourself for rankings! Not only is this inefficient, it can have negative impacts, such as making it difficult for Google to identify the “best” or most relevant page on your website for your target keyword, diluting backlinks, or decreasing page authority.
Conclusion
These are just some tips of many, many potential ways you can leverage SEO to help grow your nonprofit organization. It may seem daunting at first, but investing in SEO is well worth it. And, it’s okay if you need help along the way!
If you’re at the stage where you’re currently evaluating a partner or tool for your SEO needs, ask the following:
There’s no time like the present: dive in to SEO now to reach more people with your message, improve conversion rates, find more sponsors, volunteers, and donors, and connect with more people who need you most.
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Have you ever outsourced link building? How did you like the experience?
To be honest, mine was terrible. Allow me to share my story.
When I had a typical 9-to-5 job as a marketing director at SEMrush, we made a decision to get more links from the top resources in our segment. We ended up hiring an agency to help us build these links. The agency was charging us an outrageous $13K a month, but, unfortunately, the high price didn’t equal quality. They weren’t capable of writing anything meaningful, not to mention publishing their content on trustworthy industry blogs. What made things worse was the fact that I brought them on board.
Needless to say, we stopped working with this agency. We decided to give another one a try, thinking that this time luck would be on our side.
Well, we were wrong. Although the second agency charged us nearly three times less and promised premium quality work with superb links and stellar results, the outcome was disappointing, to say the least. We ended up getting links from irrelevant content published on sites that wrote about everything, from the ten best sex positions to the ultimate guide on cleaning your toilet.
As ridiculous as it may sound right now, back then, I didn’t feel amused. These two failed attempts at outsourcing link building left me convinced in two things: getting high-quality links is a job to be done internally, and outsourcing is simply pouring money down the drain.
Fast forward to now, and I can honestly tell you that my opinion on outsourcing has changed. Since these two unfortunate scenarios with outsourcing, I went from working for SEMrush to being a freelancer, and, when the amount of work started to grow, I launched my own link building agency, Digital Olimpus. As I gained more experience in this field, I started to realize why our attempts at outsourcing failed so miserably.
At that time, I didn’t know the ropes of link acquisition. We weren’t thinking ahead to establish strict requirements to prevent us from getting links from low-quality sites. Thus, as I went through trial and error, I gathered some unique insights about the pros and cons of link building outsourcing. Today, I’d like to share these insights with you so you can better understand which option is the right one for you — to hire an agency or an in-house link builder.
When is outsourcing the right choice for you?
Here’s my perspective as the owner of a link building agency.
The majority of our clients come to us because they don’t have the time or resources to set up a decent link building process by themselves. Most of the time, their current focus is shifted towards some other business goals, but they still understand the value of links and have some pages that are trying to rank well on Google.
Usually, our ideal client knows what kinds of pages they want to boost via links, and they understand how SEO works. In most cases, they have an SEO team that has a lack of resources to step into link building, so they’re looking for someone who could help them get some juicy links.
So, at the end of the day, our clients pay for our knowledge and experience. But there are also other reasons why companies may choose to outsource link building to an agency as opposed to hiring an in-house specialist.
1. If hiring an experienced link builder is too expensive
The first reason to outsource link building is in the recruitment costs.
According to Glassdoor, the average salary of a junior-level link builder is about 30-40K, while those who are extremely experienced will be looking for an estimated yearly salary around 100K USD. As for the hourly rate, the lowest would be $13, while more experienced link building specialists expect you to pay them as high as $16 an hour.
Besides salaries, you also need to consider other points. For example, your in-house link building specialist would also need content developed specifically for link building purposes, which should have its own separate budget. Apart from that, to do the job properly, they need to have access to backlink analysis tools, like Ahrefs (costs $99/month), SEMrush (also $99/month), Moz (starting $99/month), and Pitchbox (starting from $300/month). All in all, you’ll have to pay for these tools, which alone will cost around 6K a year.
To put a long story short, hiring an in-house link builder will cost you a pretty penny. Moreover, it might take you quite a while to find the in-house link builder you’re looking for. So, while you’re searching for one, you could give an agency a try to get your link building strategy started.
2. If you need to get links straight away
The biggest difference between hiring an in-house link builder vs. an agency is the speed of acquiring links. Usually, an agency already has a tried-and-tested link building strategy, while an in-house link builder still has to develop one.
In my opinion, this is the biggest reason why our clients are choosing our fellow link building agencies and us. We have a well-established process of building links, but most importantly – we’ve already developed meaningful relationships across particular industries and niches. So, in some cases, it doesn’t take us longer than a few minutes to secure a link.
However, if you decide to do link building by yourself, you shouldn’t expect instant results. On average, it takes 3-4 months to start getting at least 10-20 links every month. Besides, it might take you a while to find the right and meaningful way to connect with other sites, and to learn how to pitch your ideas properly.
I should say that, even for my agency, it’s always a big issue to open a new niche and start building a decent number of links per month. The first few months are resulting in 2-4 links, and that for sure can’t be described as a decent flow of links.
3. If you need help educating your team on how to build links the right way
The exchange of knowledge and experience is another reason to outsource link building. It’s definitely why I outsource some tasks, and work closely with those who have substantial expertise in the areas where I don’t feel as confident.
Paying for knowledge is an excellent way to spend money, especially if you lack time. For example, I understand how long it would take me to learn before I could do technical SEO myself, so I’d rather hire someone to help me with that instead. And, while we’re working together, I’ll take this opportunity to enhance my knowledge as well.
For this exact reason, we have a few contractors on our team who are working on other projects, but gladly share their unique strategies and approaches with us. It’s like a breath of fresh air – their experience gives us new perspectives on building high-quality links.
By the way, if you decide to hire an in-house link builder, it might take them quite some time to learn how to work with such contractors, while a link building agency would already have well-established relationships with them.
So, with all that said, try to perceive outsourcing as a learning opportunity. If you already have some experience in link building, you don’t necessarily need to ask an agency to educate you. Instead, you can follow their strategy if you see that it’s working. We have a few clients who follow this logic, as they do link building in-house while still being under our guidance. Sure, one day, they might start building links independently, but it feels nice that we paved that path for them.
4. If you want links that would take you ages to acquire by yourself
Again, it’s all about the connections and how well you can build relationships with them. If you don’t have a tight circle of partners, you can’t expect quick results from your link building efforts.
Usually, the best link building agencies already have a great network of partners. However, it’s still very important to double-check that an agency operates within your niche and has some meaningful connections.
But even if the agency hasn’t worked in your niche before, don’t give up on it just yet. Most likely, the agency might still be able to network faster due to existing relationships with partners and word-of-mouth power.
Still, even for an experienced agency, developing the network of connections in a new and unexplored field will take some time. We’re always very transparent when it comes to telling a client that we haven’t yet worked within their industry, but some clients are ready to wait. However, your needs might be different, so always bring up this question to avoid misunderstandings.
5. If you need to scale your current link building efforts
Sometimes brands realize that link building can be a good strategy for them, but they might not fully understand how to approach it, considering the specifics of their industry and niche. If this is your case, the agency will help you select the right angle and review your current link building needs objectively.
Another pain point that makes our clients ask for our help is building links to problematic targets. Some pages — commercial ones, for example — are hard to build links to in an organic way. In my recent blog post, I talked more on the topic of building links to commercial pages and a few examples of how it can be done. But if you struggle with acquiring links to some pages, you can outsource this task to an agency, which will find the right way to address these difficulties and tackle them.
When outsourcing isn’t your best option
As someone who went through an unpleasant experience with outsourcing, I should say that you really have to know what you need when hiring an agency. This might be the first and most crucial reason not to outsource link building – you should know what to expect.
However, there are also other situations when outsourcing link building will be a waste of time and money. Let’s take a look.
1. You’re looking for digital PR and consider it link building
Over the years, I’ve met a lot of potential clients who ask for articles on leading sites in their industry just for the sake of having their brand mentioned by a popular resource. While getting links from such websites would be good for your brand image, this is a task for PR.
Here’s the thing: Links acquired from such resources are usually very weak from an SEO standpoint. Besides, there are cases when guest contributors sell links from these sites. In one of them, a well-known writer who worked for Forbes and Entrepreneur sold links under the radar, which is forbidden by Google’s guidelines.
As a result, links to such websites rarely bring any benefit, because they don’t carry the SEO value we are usually looking for.
From an SEO standpoint, the best links come from websites that are not involved in such suspicious activities. In addition, don’t be quick to trust influencers, since they often sell links on their websites as well.
Instead, try to find a website that doesn’t have guest posts. Google typically favors guest posting, while pushing the websites which are only used for link building to the bottom of search results.
2. You don’t have a solid SEO strategy and you just want to build some links
Many clients don’t understand that link building and SEO are interconnected. When it comes to link building, you need to remember that the results only come if you make links to the right pages from an SEO standpoint.
What does that mean? Such pages should target the right keywords relevant to your business, and that don’t have an insane level of competition. Also, content that is allocated on those pages should match user intent.
Just for context, it takes 10 times more time to get a page with commercial intent to the top of Google results, especially if the top 10 have informational intent.
Ideally, you should understand how many links you need in order to close the current link gap; otherwise, it might take ages for your page to rank well on Google. By analyzing what kind of links your rivals have already built, you can set up the right requirements for your link building agency.
3. You have very strict requirements and an agency can’t hit that mark
Sometimes, clients underestimate their link building needs. But other times, their expectations can be way too high, and it turns into a real problem. Let me give you some examples.
Once, we had a client that wanted us to implement a whole new link building approach just for his campaign. Everything should have gone great, except he forgot to tell us that he would need a unique approach, and what we were capable of providing at that time wasn’t what he was interested in.
Naturally, our partnership ended on that note. We decided to return the funds to this client and move forward. Now we do an in-depth interview with every client to give them a very detailed overview of our link building approach and our capabilities.
The same problem can occur in a few other cases:
You want links that will be allocated only in particular content. Ask the agency if it gets links through guest blogging. If not, this is not the best option for you.
You have a list of sites from which you want to get links. Contrary to what you might expect, link building isn’t an exact science, and it’s hard to predict or guarantee that a link will be secured on a particular site.
You want links only on pages that have already built a solid number of links and are already ranking well on Google. That’s a smart strategy, but it should only be done internally, since getting a link on such a page might take ages.
So, as I mentioned before, ask the agency about its capabilities before you outsource link building. It would be fair for both sides if you and the agency have clear expectations of the final result.
4. You expect to receive referral traffic from links that an agency will be building for you
Unfortunately, there’s minimal chance that referral traffic will come. Digital marketing experts confirm that there’s a very slim chance that even guest blogging on leading sites will bring you a solid flow of referral visitors.
Nowadays, steady referral traffic only comes through sources of organic traffic. A good example is this article with a list of SEO tools by Brian Dean that receives over 7K organic visitors per month:
Certainly, tools listed in Brian’s post are all getting some traffic, too, as those visitors are browsing through them and would love to learn more about them.
In general, we rarely see that our clients are getting referral traffic. Getting a good link is one scenario, but getting a good link that will send referral traffic is a whole other story.
In my opinion, building the links that will most likely send you a solid flow of referral visitors requires an analysis of current sources of referral traffic to your competitors and industry leaders. Then, you must try to understand the reason behind this traffic, whether it’s an active audience, being featured in a newsletter, etc. But the entire process differs from the link building strategy we usually follow.
5. You’re too busy to communicate your feedback to the agency
If you expect the link building agency to deliver the results you expect, communication is key. Outsourcing is not about delegating the task and forgetting about it. It’s about close collaboration.
With that said, be prepared to have to go on a number of calls with an agency just to figure out the link building strategy you will follow, not to mention other related meetings that will occur in the process. It is especially important if your link building needs are very specific.
So, let me reiterate – ongoing communication is crucial for building juicy, high-quality links. If you don’t have time to talk with the agency and articulate your needs and expectations properly, outsourcing link building is not the right option for you.
6. You don’t have a sufficient budget
If you are planning to hire an agency to outsource link building, you should evaluate your financial situation first, because it will cost you a fair amount of money.
To give you some context, we only take long-term contracts starting from $10K because one-time partnerships don’t help bring permanent link building results. In general, the entire process of building links should be ongoing, and your website should continuously show a rising link growth graph:
So, no matter how hard you try, the lack of a systematic approach to link building means no tangible results, and the client won’t get any profit from these links. That’s what made me understand that single-time link building is a waste of time and money.
What’s the verdict?
All in all, I should say that hiring a link building agency is worth every penny, as long as it has the experience you’re looking for, of course. Just from the rational standpoint, it’s much harder and more cost-intensive to do link building by yourself, especially if you have little knowledge of it.
There are also other perks of outsourcing link building. First and foremost, when you’re hiring an agency to build links, you’re paying for the speed of acquiring links. An agency already has all the connections to get links faster, in addition to a well-established process of building links in general.
Nevertheless, evaluate your needs first. Outsourcing might not be the best option for you if you are more interested in PR, not link building. You might also want to check what the agency can offer, as your requirements might not fit its profile. And, of course, outsourcing is not an option if you don’t have time to communicate with an agency or you have insufficient funds for such partnership.
However, in general, if you ask me now if outsourcing is worth it, I would say yes, but only if you are committed. Remember, outsourcing link building to an agency shouldn’t be a one-time occasion. If you want ongoing results, you need to commit to a long-term, close cooperation.
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Last week, we took you into the future with SEO expert Britney Muller to explore link prospecting in 2021. This week, we're going back in time — all the way to 2017 — for her concrete advice on an important part of building links: image link building.
Image link building is a delicate art. There are some distinct considerations from traditional link building, and doing it successfully requires a balance of creativity, curiosity, and having the right tools on hand. Let's dive in!
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Video Transcription
Hey, Moz fans, welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're going to go over all things image link building, which is sort of an art. I'm so excited to dig into this with you.
Know your link targets
So first and foremost, you need to know your link targets:
I. Popular industry platforms - top pages
What are those top platforms or websites that you would really like to acquire a link from? Then, from there, you can start to understand who might be influencers on those platforms, who's writing the content, who might you contact, and also what are the top pages currently for those sites. There are a number of tools that give you a glimpse into that information. Moz's OSE, Open Site Explorer, will show you top pages. SEMrush has a top page report. SimilarWeb has a popular page report. You can dig into all that information there, really interesting stuff.
II. Old popular images - update!
You can also start to dig into old, popular images and then update them. So what are old popular images within your space that you could have an opportunity to revamp and update? A really neat way to sort of dig into some of that is BuzzSumo's infographics filter, and then you would insert the topic. You enter the industry or the topic you're trying to address and then search by the infographics to see if you can come across anything.
III. Transform popular content into images
You can also just transform popular content into images, and I think there is so much opportunity in doing that for new statistics reports, new data that comes out. There are tons of great opportunities to transform those into multiple images and leverage that across different platforms for link building.
So, from here, we're going to dive into the keyword research part of this whole puzzle, and this is really understanding the intent behind people searching about the topic or the product or whatever it might be. Something you can do is evaluate keywords with link intent. This is a brilliant concept I heard about a couple weeks back from Dan Shure's podcast. Thank you, Dan. Essentially it's the idea that keywords with statistics or facts after the keyword have link intent baked into the search query. It's brilliant. Those individuals are searching for something to reference, to maybe link to, to include in a presentation or an article or whatever that might be. It has this basic link intent.
Another thing you want to evaluate is just anything around images. Do any of your keywords and pictures or photos, etc. have good search volume with some opportunities? What does that search result currently look like? You have to evaluate what's currently ranking to understand what's working and what's not. I used to say at my old agency I didn't want anyone writing any piece of content until they had read all of the 10 search results for that keyword or that phrase we were targeting. Why would you do that until you have a full understanding of how that looks currently and how we can make something way better?
Rand had also mentioned this really cool tip on if you find some keywords, it's good to evaluate whether or not the image carousel shows up for those searches, because if it does, that's a little glimpse into the searcher intent that leads to images. That's a good sign that you're on the right track to really optimize for a certain image. It's something to keep in mind.
Provide value
So, from here, we're going to move up to providing value. Now we're in the brainstorming stage. Hopefully, you've gotten some ideas, you know where you want to link from, and you need to provide value in some way. It could be a...
I. Reference/bookmark Maybe something that people would bookmark, that always works.
II. Perspective is a really interesting one. So some of the most beautiful data visualizations do this extremely well, where they can simplify a confusing concept or a lot of data. It's a great way to leverage images and graphics.
III. Printouts still work really well. Moz has the SEO Dev Cheat Sheet that I have seen printed all over at different agencies, and that's really neat to see it adding value directly.
IV. Curate images. We see this a lot with different articles. Maybe the top 25 to 50 images from this tradeshow or this event or whatever it might be, that's a great way to leverage link building and kind of getting people fired up about a curated piece of content.
Gregory Ciotti — I don't know if I'm saying that right — has an incredible article I suggest you all read called "Why a Visual Really Is Worth a Thousand Words," and he mentions don't be afraid to get obvious. I love that, because I think all too often we tend to overthink images and executing things in general. Why not just state the obvious and see how it goes? He's got great examples.
Optimize
So, from here, we are going to move into optimization. If any of you need a brush-up on image optimization, I highly suggest you check out Rand's Whiteboard Friday on image SEO. It covers everything. But some of the basics are your...
Title
You want to make sure that the title of the image has your keyword and explains what it is that you're trying to convey.
Alt text
This was first and foremost designed for the visually impaired, so you need to be mindful of visually impaired screen readers that will read this to people to explain what the image actually is. So first and foremost, you just need to be helpful and provide information in a descriptive way to describe that image.
Compression
Compression is huge. Page speed is so big right now. I hear about it all the time. I know you guys do too. But one of the easiest ways to help page speed is to compress those huge images. There's a ton of great free tools out there, like Optimizilla, where you can bulk upload a bunch of large images and then bulk download. It makes it super easy. There are also some desktop programs, if you're doing this kind of stuff all the time, that will automatically compress images you download or save. That might be worth looking into if you do this a lot.
You want to host the image. You want it to live on your domain. You want to house that. You can leverage it on other platforms, but you want sort of that original to be on your site.
SRCSET
Source set attribute is getting a little technical. It's super interesting, and it's basically this really incredible image attribute that allows you to set the minimum browser size and the image you would prefer to show up for different sizes. So you can not only have different images show up for different devices in different sizes, but you can also revamp them. You can revamp the same image and serve it better for a mobile user versus a tablet, etc. Jon Henshaw has some of the greatest stuff on source set. Highly suggest you look at some of his articles. He's doing really cool things with it. Check that out.
Promotion
So, from here, you want to promote your images. You obviously want to share it on popular platforms. You want to reach back out to some of these things that you might have into earlier. If you updated a piece of content, make them aware of that. Or if you transformed a really popular piece of content into some visuals, you might want to share that with the person who is sharing that piece of content. You want to start to tap into that previous research with your promotion.
Inform the influencers
Ask people to share it. There is nothing wrong with just asking your network of people to share something you've worked really hard on, and hopefully, vice versa, that can work in return and you're not afraid to share something a connection of yours has that they worked really hard on.
Monitor the image SERPs
From here, you need to monitor. One of the best ways to do this is Google reverse image search. So if you go to Google and you click the images tab, there's that little camera icon that you can click on and upload images to see where else they live on the web. This is a great way to figure out who is using your image, where it's being held, are you getting a backlink or are you not. You want to keep an eye on all of that stuff.
Two other tools to do this, that I've heard about, are Image Raider and TinEye. But I have not had great experience with either of these. I would love to hear your comments below if maybe you have.
Reverse image search with Google works the best for me. This is also an awesome opportunity for someone to get on the market and create a Google alert for images. I don't think anyone is actually doing that right now. If you know someone that is, please let me know down below in the comments. But it could be a cool business opportunity, right? I don't know.
So for monitoring, let's say you find your image is being used on different websites. Now you need to do some basic outreach to get that link. You want to request that link for using your image.
This is just a super basic template that I came up with. You can use it. You can change it, do whatever you want. But it's just:
Hi, [first name].
Thank you so much for including our image in your article. Great piece. Just wondering if you could link to us.com as the source.
Thanks,
Britney
Something like that. Something short, to the point. If you can make it more personalized, please do so. I can't stress that enough. People will take you way more seriously if you have some nugget of personal information or connection that you can make.
From there, you just sort of stay in this loop. After you go through this process, you need to continue to promote your content and continue to monitor and do outreach and push that to maximize your link building efforts.
So I hope you enjoyed this. I look forward to hearing all of your comments and thoughts down below in the comments. I look forward to seeing you all later. Thanks for joining us on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. Thanks.
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As we head into 2021, the work of reclaiming lost links and building new ones remains crucial. In this week's brand new episode of Whiteboard Friday, SEO expert Britney Muller is back with the second installment in her link building series, this time walking us through some tips and tricks for an important part of your link building journey: link prospecting.
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Video Transcription
Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today me and my space buns are taking you into the future to evaluate link prospecting, a really important part of link building.
This is part of my link building series. If you missed the first video, definitely go check it out. It's all around no-brainer link building. It's the easiest thing you can possibly do today to reclaim and score some backlinks for your website. So super helpful. Check that out.
What are your business goals?
To kick things off, this gets a little overwhelming.
There are so many ways that you can prospect backlinks today that it can get a little intimidating. So if you start to find yourself going down a rabbit hole or getting overwhelmed, fall back on this button here. Just think about your business goals.
What are your website's goals, and is the path that you're falling down conducive to that? Is it helpful? So that kind of just helps you course correct. I use it all the time, and I still manage to go down tons of rabbit holes. But it can be quite helpful.
Link prospecting
So there are really two ways to do link prospecting. One is to evaluate what's worked well in the past. How have websites in this particular industry gotten links in the past? The second is where are there content gaps? Where are there some opportunities to create wanted or desired content for a particular space?
Explore competitive backlinks
Let's go down the first one. So one of the more popular ways is to use a backlink tool to evaluate competitive backlinks. So not only are you evaluating the backlinks to Competitor A and Competitor B, but you can start to do some fun things with the intersection of these.
So what we're looking at is: What are the shared backlinks that Competitor A and Competitor B both have that you don't? What does that look like? If these websites are linking to both A and B, why couldn't they also potentially link to you? Those tend to be more promising backlink prospects.
It's also very easy to use a tool like Link Intersect, my all-time favorite, within Moz Pro to very, very quickly identify what those opportunities are. From there, you can also start to evaluate old or outdated linked to content. This is really just sort of setting the stage and better understanding again what's worked well in the past.
What are the top pages that are linked to for Competitor B and Competitor A? What kind of content is that? Is there anything that's incredibly outdated that has a ton of backlinks to it, where you could potentially update it and encourage those sites to link to you? There are tons of very interesting and fun ways to explore that. Link Explorer, I mean, honestly so, so powerful and easy to quickly filter and sort different opportunities there.
Leverage advanced search operators
Third is to leverage advanced search operators. Now I'm not going to go through all the operators I listed here. I got a little nuts. But some important ones to remember is that if you use quotes, those words have to be in the search results. So here I'm looking for dog training, and then it must include statistics, tips, resources, news.
Why am I looking for these first and foremost? Because these keywords, they carry link intent. People doing particular searches around something something statistics are more likely to link to one of those resulting pages than your average dog training search that just might be people putting material together or referencing things.
So it's really great to sort of bake in your link building plan with keywords that have link intent. It just makes so much sense. You can also use intext:, which just means show me results that include this within the text, and here I have "links." It sounds super old school, but there are still lots of pages that use links within the page to identify resources moving forward.
You can also use the minus to exclude results from a particular URL. We're going to link to Moz's Advanced Search Operator Guide. It's super helpful. It has all of these and more. Definitely play around. Leave comments down below if you have other suggestions. It's super fun to kind of come up with different formulas.
Evaluate link propensity
Number four is to really evaluate the link propensity of these potential link targets. What I mean by that is have they linked to websites in the past? Do they never link out? Is that not a thing that these particular websites that you're finding do? It's really important, and it will help you in the long run to identify sites that are more likely to link to you. Number five, there are so many fun link discovery hacks and tricks, and it's one of my favorite conversations at SEO conventions and just in general.
Discover fun hacks
Everyone has really fun kind of things within their industry. One of my new favorites is for local SEO, where local links are so incredibly valuable for local SEO sites. A trick that I've discovered recently is the one and only Rand Fishkin's SparkToro tool will show you, if you put in a topic and a particular area, it surfaces what the top media outlets are for that particular area.
It's incredible, especially if you're doing work for a local SEO client that isn't where you live or you don't have all that awareness of it. It's extremely insightful. So a fun little trick there. I want to hear your tricks down below. There are tons of others. Super fun.
Content gaps
Then just to briefly touch on where are the content gaps. This deserves a whole other Whiteboard Friday in and of itself. But I have mentioned them before. I am an insanely huge fan of Fractl and the work that they're doing. They use old-school journalism tactics, and they discovered that they could pull offline DUI data and bring it online in a really beautiful Tableau interface, and it did very well. They got lots of backlinks. It was very, very useful for users, and it just made sense. So I absolutely love that example.
It's important to kind of look at both of these. Play around and have fun with it. Again, please leave any tips and tricks down below in the comments. I cannot wait to read them.
I will see you all again soon. Thanks for watching.
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Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, business owners have had to move quickly to make drastic changes in their services to meet searchers’ new needs in a continuously unpredictable landscape.
While “Near me” searches saw a slight drop in early 2020, since then, have maintained a steady increase, further solidifying the need for brands and businesses of all sizes to be present and discoverable online.
During the pandemic, almost a third of shoppers have purchased from a brand that’s new to them. In this article, we’ll explore tactics for surfacing your new or updated services digitally to guide and convert these new searchers during their decision-making process.
What types of questions are searchers asking?
How can I do business with you?
When thinking about your Google My Business profile and adjustments to your information, the most important element is informing searchers how they can do business with you.
You’ll want to ensure all of your core location data is updated. This includes marking whether or not you’re temporarily closed. If you’re open, you should have the most accurate operating hours published.
Furthermore, you should make it as easy as possible for searchers to get in contact with you if they have any questions. This includes making sure your phone number is accurate, monitoring your Q&A section on Google My Business, and enabling messaging if you have the staff to respond. These are all methods that make customers feel connected to you, which will encourage them to convert and purchase from you.
What type of safety precautions are you taking with your customers and staff?
The health and safety of customers and employees is top of mind for all searchers. As a business, this information should be front and center so potential customers can understand how important this is to your organization.
It should be incredibly clear to anyone looking to engage with your business what types of safety precautions and protocols you’re following, and how this could impact their trip to your business or the delivery of your services. These should include things like social distancing measures which may result in long lines, mask requirements, etc. Surfacing this information as early as possible makes the decision to do business with you that much easier.
What types of services are you offering, and are these different than normal?
Businesses and consumers have had to adjust to so many new normals. In order to capture new customers and grow the evangelism of existing ones, remove as much friction as possible by communicating changes up front.
If you’ve made changes to services or products that users have come to rely on you for, make it clear what has changed and how. This is especially true for essential businesses that are growing particularly busy and facing supply chain shortages.
What can all businesses do to communicate updates about new and changing services on Google My Business?
1. Update your attributes
Google has rolled out dozens of highly visible attributes and will continue to introduce new ones. This includes details like whether you offer in-person or online service and appointments, delivery and pick up, and safety measures for in-person shopping. Keep an eye on these and make sure all relevant attributes are applied to your business.
Now that Google has temporarily lifted the limit on API access for chains, businesses of all sizes should be leveraging posts. Posts allow you to share timely and relevant updates spanning temporary closures, product and service updates, promotions, and gift card options.
4. Update your images
If your product, service, or location looks different to returning customers, this can cause confusion or disappointment. Don’t underestimate the power of updated imagery on your Google My Business profile. Most smartphones have a high enough quality camera that even snapping a few pictures each week and uploading these will be enough.
5. Publish additional hours
Publishing additional hours sets helps to surface the supplemental offerings you have. These include senior hours, online operating hours, drive through hours, pickup hours, and more.
Industry-specific considerations
Healthcare
One of the most impacted industries, especially from a digital perspective, has been healthcare. Both sick and healthy patients have been forced to rethink how they can access their healthcare needs.
Healthcare organizations are making adjustments to serve existing and new patients. There’s been a large shift to offer telehealth appointments in lieu of in-person for a number of specialties from internal medicine to therapy. Governmental agencies also reported increases in telehealth visits, with a 154% increase in the last week of March 2020 alone.
Based on this data, in early April, Google rolled out a telehealth link for healthcare categories. This enabled healthcare organizations and providers to surface and convert patients with non-emergency needs who are cautious of visiting an office in-person.
Just as critical as launching telehealth support was the introduction of the coronavirus testing facility information on maps and search. Google My Business partnered with a number of third party health and governmental sources, as well as with Castlight to ingest data for new testing sites. The roll out of COVID-19 testing information was a phased approach and has evolved over the last few months. For healthcare organizations offering COVID-19 testing, this is the most relevant and critical service you can add to your Google My Business listing.
Retail
For retail businesses, one of the biggest challenges faced over the last few months has likely been inventory fluctuations and ordering methods. This is why businesses of all sizes have been integrating product shopping features and live inventory on their listings. Google even rolled out free product listings in the U.S. to support businesses.
Once retailers have made it easy to see what products are in stock, they’ve had to adjust to support different methods of ordering and pickup. This includes enabling “buy online, pick up in-store”, curbside pickup, and contactless delivery. Google has rolled out attributes to highlight each of these, so businesses should ensure each location’s offerings are reflected.
Financial services
Banks and businesses within the financial service industry have more limited options due to regulations and the nature of their business. In addition to the safety measures they’re taking at their local branches, banking customers have been relying on drive-up support and virtual banking services. By leveraging drive-through and online appointment attributes, as well as by highlighting unique drive-through hours, financial service providers can better help customers understand the ways they can complete their banking.
Restaurants
Restaurants have had to deal with continual and fluctuating mandates that dictate restrictions on how and when they can open. Depending on where the restaurants are located and the guidelines of the area, they have to communicate whether they offer delivery, takeout, and/or dine-in, and what that looks like. Some dine-in has been restricted to outdoor dining only, while others have been restricted to smaller capacities to allow for social distancing.
There are a number of Google My Business features that you can utilize in order to let customers know what dining features you have available. Restaurants should make sure to keep their dine-in, delivery, and take-out attributes updated. Utilizing posts to describe dining accommodations such as outdoor-only or limited indoor capacity can also be helpful for customers. If you’re offering delivery, online orders, or reservations, make sure you’ve reviewed the Online Ordering feature that activates the blue action buttons on your Knowledge Panel.
Conclusion
Businesses of all sizes and industries have made it easier for consumers to engage with them as this pandemic continues to drive changes in everyday life. Follow these tips to make sure your updates are discoverable on your Google My Business profile, where the majority of “near me” searches are happening.
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