7 Tips to Get the Most Out of Online Conferences

As we anxiously await the return to in-person conferences, with a little ingenuity and virtual elbow grease, we can still forge new professional relationships over an internet connection rather than a cocktail. Read on for tips on how to bring your best self to digital events, and for networking while remote!

Speaking of online conferences, don’t forget to snag your ticket to MozCon Virtual 2021!

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1. Set your intention

To get the most out of your online event, you need to go in with an intention. That way you’ll be more likely to gain something from the experience.

Ask yourself, what are you hoping to achieve? Some examples could be:

• Gain a business opportunity

• Learn more about how to recover from the latest algorithm update

• Find ways to increase efficiency within your SEO processes

• Feel more confident selling your services

2. Schedule accordingly

Many events will provide you with schedules ahead of time — look at them! (Pssst...if you haven’t yet, now is the perfect time to check out the agenda for MozCon Virtual.)

These schedules can help you go into the conference with a clear idea of how you’re going to spend your time. Going in with a plan will allow you to focus on the content of the event and your intentions each day, as opposed to wasting time frantically trying to decide what sessions you’re going to attend.

Choosing your sessions

Once you know what your intentions are and you have the event schedule, determine what will be the most beneficial content for you. This can be especially helpful when the event has multiple tracks, very few break times, etc.

Choosing your sessions may come down to a process of elimination, and it’s much easier to eliminate sessions when you have some sort of goal in mind.

Things to consider when choosing your sessions are:

• The topic

• The speaker

• The time

• The availability of on-demand videos post-conference

Your intention may be to broaden your horizons this year, so instead of opting to see presentations with the same topics or speakers that you saw last year, you may see someone new discussing something you find interesting but haven’t had time to explore. You may have a tight schedule and not be able to make anything past 3pm. If some of the sessions will be available after the conference, it may be worth checking out topics you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Know when to take a break

When you’re planning out your schedule, you need to make sure you build in time for breaks. This means time to eat, time to decompress, time to refill your coffee cup, and time to do work or home stuff.

Conferences usually have a lot of breaks and that’s for good reason. Ideally, you’re going to be learning a lot. But if you try to learn it all at once without giving your brain a break, very little of it will stick.

So, be sure to listen to your body. If you start to feel foggy or overwhelmed, take a break, grab some water, and move around a bit.

Build in networking time

Something else you want to account for when planning your virtual event agenda is when you’re going to network. Some conferences will have time to network built in, but others won’t.

You’ll want to dedicate time to get to know the other attendees by joining conversations and adding people on social media. This will look a bit different in the virtual space, as you won’t be meeting for coffee or chatting in the lobby, but try to stay creative! Zoom chats and video calls are a great way to connect with new or old friends.

Recap at the end of the day

At the end of each day, take some time to reflect. Think back to what your intention was, what you did throughout the day to fulfill that intention, and what you can put into action moving forward.

This is a great exercise to ensure you’re making the most out of the event. Far too often, we take in all of the information and do nothing with it! That’s why we like to suggest creating at least three action items at the end of each day.

3. Gather the essentials

Okay, it’s the first day of the conference and you’re about to jump in front of the computer. BUT! Before you do that, you need to make sure you have everything you need to be successful.

Get a clean notebook or start a fresh doc

Having a clean slate for notes will help you stay focused while attending any conference (virtual or otherwise). So grab a new, crisp notebook or create a new document file on your computer before you get started.

If you decide to go the computer route, be sure you close all other tabs and turn off notifications! You want to be sure that your attention stays on the conference.

Taking notes during a virtual conference

With that new notebook or document of yours, you’ll want to take the most effective notes possible. With that in mind, here are a few things to take note of:

• What you learned

• How can you apply it

• What can you share with your team

To ensure that you’re on track to capture each of these things, when you go into each session, write your intention for the session at the top of your notes page. Then, divide your pages by “what I learned,” “how to apply,” and “what to share.” This will keep your notes nice and organized and give you a visual cue on whether or not you’re getting what you expected out of the session. It will also make your end-of-day recap much easier.

When it comes to virtual events, one of the biggest benefits is that you often get the slide decks and video bundles afterward. We suggest finding out whether the event you’re attending offers those things before you start taking notes, as it may lighten your note-taking burden a bit.

Have some snacks, water, and coffee (or tea)

Perhaps the most important things to have during a virtual conference are the snacks and drinks! As you know, at MozCon, we take this part very seriously, so we expect nothing less if you attend our virtual event.

Brain food can help you stay focused. Some of our favorite snacks are granola bars, nuts, veggies, and of course, donuts. However, you have full control over the spread this year.

Be sure to also have plenty of water and your favorite caffeinated beverage as well!

4. Look for networking opportunities

Depending on which virtual event you attend, the networking opportunities will look different. Keeping a creative eye out for opportunity is key to your success!

Live chats

Much like during regular conferences, there are bound to be live chats happening. They may happen on the actual event platform, or they may take place on social media. Some events will use a platform like Zoom that allows viewers to chat with each other within the platform, while others may have more of a broadcast format where chats happen on Twitter with a hashtag.

Joining Q&As

A super valuable aspect of conferences is being able to speak to presenters after they give their talk. Sometimes this happens during a predetermined time slot, such as right after the presentation, or it may happen when you catch them in the lobby or at an event later on. Either way, this time to ask questions about their expertise is a huge value-add to the experience.

With conferences going virtual and live chats happening publicly during the presentations, this Q&A time has shifted a bit. Instead of having to wait for the presentation to be over, in some cases, presenters will reply to questions from the live chat as they're speaking. Some panels are pre-recorded, giving speakers a chance to interact on various platforms during the event itself. Some events will even have specific “presentations” that are more like facilitated Ask Me Anything-style interviews or panels where questions are taken from the audience and posed to the speaker(s).

Networking at MozCon Virtual

Every year, we hear from attendees about how networking is one of their favorite parts of the conference. We made sure to keep it an integral part of this year's virtual event, too — check out all the ways you can connect with speakers, industry experts, attendees, and thought leaders at MozCon Virtual 2021! Beyond the opportunities for social connection within the conference itself, we will also have a virtual photo booth where attendees can snap a selfie, add some fancy circus-themed backgrounds, frames and stickers, and share them out on social media!

In-session Q&A chat

Mid-presentation, pop into the Q&A chat with your real-time questions and get them answered by speakers. You'll also be able to chat with other attendees about the content and provide your own insights about the session and topic. Speakers will be available to answer questions during their scheduled session times, so it's a perfect opportunity to get clarification, further insight, or forge those all-important connections!

Birds of a Feather "table" discussions

Birds of a Feather tables are one of the biggest MozCon hits year after year, and we didn't want anyone to miss out! We'll facilitate 30-minute-long group discussions each day of the conference for you to connect with those interested in specific topics via video and audio chat. Each discussion will be led by an industry leader, giving you all the opportunity to say "hey" to the folks whose work you admire and collaborate with them on ideas, theories, obstacles you've faced, and more.

MozCon Virtual partners

This year, we have a curated lineup of trusted partners who can't wait to meet and network with attendees of MozCon, including 97th Floor, Crowd Content, PageOnePower/PAGES SEO Magazine, and Wix!

Attendees will be able to visit and chat with sponsors within the MozCon Virtual platform, and sponsors will also be hosting Birds of a Feather sessions, plus taking part in presentation chats!

5. Get active

No matter where online networking is happening, be sure you're a part of it! The more you interact, the more likely people are to recognize your name when you reach out after the event. The only caution here is that you have to be sure your interactions are meaningful — don’t just comment with clapping hands. Add something to the conversation.

Add insight

The best thing about people is that we're all different and have fresh perspectives to bring to the table. Don’t be afraid to add on to someone’s thoughts.

Let's use a fun example. If someone says that the best mascot hug ever was from Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, you may jump in and ask if they’ve ever met Roger MozBot, famed hugger and robot dancer extraordinaire. Or you could build on the thought by saying something like, “Mickey is a great hugger, I think it’s because he goes over instead of under!”

In both of these instances, you’ve joined the conversation and added value.

Add clarification

Speakers often try to fit a lot of information into a relatively short time frame. That said, questions will likely arise in the live chats. This could very easily be your time to shine! If you've got knowledge to share, feel free to answer the question to the best of your ability and try to add clarification.

This is absolutely one of the best ways to position yourself as an expert and form a relationship with someone you’ve never met. It allows you to prove you’re knowledgeable and give the person something they value for free.

Add sources

Whether you are asking a question, answering a question, or just chiming in with added insight, adding resources in conversation is extremely beneficial. This could mean that you recommend a tool, a person, or an article link. These resources for the other viewers can be extremely beneficial and help you establish your credibility.

Now, we don’t suggest trying to come up with a source for everything, but if you have one right off of the top of your head, dropping a link in the chat may really help someone.

BONUS: Add people on social

While this one's not necessarily about adding value per se, it is about adding. Adding influencers, presenters, or other attendees after interacting with them (even if briefly) may increase your chances of getting a follow-back or accepted request as you'll still be top of mind. Try to add people no later than 24 hours after your last interaction, and consider sending a friendly "hey!" with a note about what you spoke about to keep the connection fresh.

6. Perfect your follow-up

After connecting with people during the online conference, you'll want to follow up with them and stay in touch.

The most important part of following up is the first impression. You don’t want to come right out of the gate with a request of any sort. Instead, look to build a relationship first. This could mean shooting a quick follow-up message recapping your conversation with the person, telling them that you appreciated their time and that you look forward to more conversations.

After sending your initial follow-up, be sure to interact with the person at least once a week to stay top-of-mind. This is easiest on social media as you can like, comment, share their content, and ensure that your name is showing up in their notifications. However, direct messages, emails, and even phone calls are sure to be more impactful.

The best thing you can do when following up is to stick to what you're most comfortable with and be consistent while continuing to add value.

7. Have fun and be yourself!

The number-one thing you have to offer is yourself. Your experiences make you unique and others can learn from that! So when you are attending online events and connecting with others, just remember to be yourself. And of course, have fun! 

MozCon Virtual 2021 Interview Series: Joy Hawkins

We're thrilled to welcome Joy Hawkins back to the MozCon Virtual stage! Local SEOs know Joy as a GMB expert, and for her work leading Local Search Forum, Local U, and the amazing team at Sterling Sky. 

Ahead of the show, we talked with Joy about her research into Google Posts, what she loves most about her work in local SEO, and what she’s looking forward to at MozCon Virtual 2021. Check out the interview below!

And don’t forget to grab your ticket to see Joy and our other incredible speakers at this year’s MozCon!

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Question: 2020 was quite a year, how did the Sterling Sky team adjust? What were some of your favorite projects?

Joy: We were really fortunate. Because we have clients in so many industries, we didn't have a huge number of cancellations when COVID first hit last year. We had a couple of rough months, but most of our clients that did pause their services ended up unpausing after a few months.

We actually saw a lot of growth in the second half of last year and were able to actually hire six more staff in 2020, two of which had lost their previous jobs because of COVID. So overall, I feel really blessed and saw a lot of good come out of a bad situation.

Question: What do you think was the biggest challenge for local SEOs this past year? What changes or trends stood out to you?

Joy: There have been a lot of technical issues and bugs to deal with when it comes to Google My Business. They launched a ton of new features to try and adapt to the ever-changing environment, and I find whenever that happens, stuff breaks.

Question: Local SEO is constantly changing. How do you and the team stay on top of algorithm updates and changes?

Joy: We track everything. I make a habit of trying to know everything that is going on in the industry, and part of how I do that is by moderating the Google My Business forum and our own forum, the Local Search Forum. I also find the local SEO community is really active on Twitter, so often new things get shared there.

Question: You founded Sterling Sky in 2017. Could you describe what it was like founding and building an agency? Was there anything that surprised you?

Joy: When I started, I thought it was just going to be me, and maybe a few others. I never envisioned having this many staff (19 currently) or clients, so that has definitely been an exciting piece that I never planned.

I remember when I hired my first full-time staff in 2017, I wasn't even sure I had enough to pay him and had a plan to cut my own salary if needed. Literally, the same month he started, we had an influx of new clients that was unexpected, so it all worked out perfectly.

Question: You are extremely well-respected in the Local SEO industry — what steps did you take to get to where you are today? What recommendations do you have for others looking to elevate their personal brand in the SEO space?

Joy: Never be afraid to help people or share things that you've learned. I started in this space by writing articles. It started as my own blog (which morphed into the Sterling Sky blog), but then I started writing for other publications and becoming a lot more active on social media. Forums played a huge role in how I learned and shared knowledge. I also made a habit of attending conferences and meeting the people I looked up to. I'll never forget the first time I met Mike Blumenthal and how intimidated I was. Networking in this space is really important and MozCon is definitely one of the best places to do that.

Question: What is your favorite part about local SEO work? What is the hardest part?

Joy: I love the challenge. It's like solving a really difficult puzzle. I've always loved strategy board games and doing SEO often feels like that.

The awesome thing about working with SMBs is that changes can get implemented quickly and you don't have tons of hoops to jump through to get stuff approved. Seeing the impact from our work quickly and watching clients' leads increase is insanely rewarding.

I'd say the hardest part is dealing with algorithm changes. A huge majority of the time, algorithm updates are a good thing for our clients, but it's definitely frustrating the times when you feel Google gets it wrong.

Question: At MozCon, you’ll discuss a study you and your team conducted where you analyzed more than 1,000 Google Posts. Why Google Posts? What sparked your interest in this topic?

Joy: Google posts are something I get asked about on almost every webinar I'm on. People always seem to be wondering what they are supposed to post about. I think I get asked if posts impact ranking several times a month.

Question: What insights are you most excited to share with our MozCon audience?

Joy: I think people will be surprised to see what types of posts performed best. It definitely wasn't the outcome I was expecting. Based on posts that I see regularly on Google My Business listings, I'm not sure everyone is aware of what types of content performs best.

Question: Why should Local SEOs invest in a Google Post strategy?

Joy: It's a really easy win. You can drive more traffic and conversions with posts with minimal effort. It's one of those low-hanging-fruit strategies that every business should utilize.

Question: Who in the MozCon lineup are you most excited to watch this year? Anything else you are looking forward to?

Joy: There are so many to choose from. Wil Reynolds has a way of always blowing my mind every time he talks, so I'm definitely excited to hear his. Dana DiTomaso is another of my favorite speakers. She's one of the smartest people I know in this industry. I'm also very excited to see Noah Learner's name on the list. I actually met him at a past MozCon and couldn't get over how much energy he had. I'm not sure where his energy comes from, but I need to find out. I heard him speak recently at one of our LocalU events and was really impressed at his knowledge and ability to analyze data.

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A big thank you to Joy for her time! To learn more about Joy's upcoming presentation, see details on our other speakers, and to purchase your ticket, make sure you click the link below!

The Most Challenging Parts of the Content-Led Link Building Process

Earlier this month, we launched our annual State of Link Building Survey, which aims to give the SEO industry insights into the way link building is currently being done, how it’s measured and perceived, and the future of link building.

This year, we asked a bunch of additional questions related to the content-led link building process, one of which asked respondents to tell us which steps of the process they found most challenging. Here are the results:

Today, we’re going to talk through each step of this process and look at ways to make them less challenging, thus leading to more successful results.

1. Getting links from outreach targets

I wasn’t too surprised to see this picked as the most challenging part of the process. After all, the crucial part of succeeding isn’t in your control. You’re asking someone else to do something for you, and all of the work up until this point will be for nothing if they just don’t want to do it. Not to mention that bloggers and journalists can often get hundreds of emails a day, meaning that standing out can be difficult, even if you have a solid campaign idea. As Stacey MacNaught, one of the contributors to our report, says:

“Naturally, as more and more people turn to content marketing and digital PR tactics, the space gets more crowded. Journalists are getting HUNDREDS of emails a day. So even if what you have is brilliant, there's always going to be that element of things that's out of your control.”

There’s another crucial element in the process here that is rarely, if ever, talked about: luck. As Stacey goes on to say:

“What if your email just lands in that important inbox just as they're getting a response to something really important? What if it lands on a day they just happen to be out of office? What happens if they login and there's 400 unreads in the inbox and yours just gets scanned over? Yes, you can have tactics and strategies in place to chase up, or optimize timing. But let's not fool ourselves into believing that there isn't an element of this that's luck even after you've produced something wonderful.”

One scenario I often think about is the fact that many of us will check email on our phone whilst on the move, or even when taking a break from our desktop and making a coffee. What if a journalist reads your email, likes it, but by the time they get back to their desk, something else has grabbed their attention?

The thing is, as we’ll discuss a bit more later, that the seeds of success at this point in the process are sewn long before you send that message to the person who you’d like to link to your campaign.

With all of that said, how can we improve our chances of getting links at this point in the process, and overcome this challenge?

Don’t treat outreach as a numbers game

It’s 2021 and we’re long past the point of link building being a numbers game. I’m not just talking about outreach here, I’m talking about the effectiveness of links themselves on your organic search rankings. Long gone are the days when raw numbers of links were the key driver, at least over the long-term. You’ll still see some websites ranking off the back of high volumes of low quality links, but it’s not something that a legitimate brand should build their search traffic on.

As Gisele Navarro commented on this question:

“This right here is the reason why trying to scale content-led link building campaigns is a waste of time. I've read people saying what we do is a numbers game but it's not.”

Gisele mentions an important word — scale. Once you scale anything, quality can start to suffer, and this is the same across many processes. Of course, some quality can be maintained, but when it comes to link building, scale often means a number of things:

• Emailing as many link prospects as possible

• Using email templates with minimal personalization

• Automating follow-ups

None of these are a great way to represent a brand online, let alone be effective at link building.

Gisele went on to talk about the importance of putting time into content instead of worrying about scaling outreach:

“No matter how many emails you send or how many sites you add to your target list, if your content is not link-worthy then you will struggle getting links. Grab all the time and effort you're dedicating to scaling link building and put it into the content you're producing.”

So, the question becomes, how can you be more effective at outreach? Let’s look at a few ways.

Focus on key relationships in your sector

Much has been said about the convergence of SEO and PR over the years, and I don’t want to focus too much on that today. But one thing that PR professionals are good at is building relationships, and I think that’s something that has often translated well into the SEO world.

You don’t need to have a campaign in your hand in order to start building relationships, either. You can start any time with a simple email, and many journalists or bloggers will welcome an authentic message from you where you might be starting a conversation about their work or views on a specific topic. Our team at Aira has done this many times over the years, and real friendships have developed as a result.

Look at your sector and ask yourself how you can engage with key people — without asking for anything in return. You’ll be surprised at how receptive those people are.

The key point to remember here is that you’re putting time and effort into this up front, knowing that you’ll see the rewards later. When the time comes to share a campaign that could be genuinely useful to your contact, they’re going to be far more likely to open and read your email. Even if the campaign isn’t for them, you’re likely to be told that, and have the chance to get feedback rather than having your email completely ignored without knowing why.

Find the right person to contact

When link prospecting, it’s very easy to go to a domain and make a note of the first name and email address that you find, and then continue on. This is fine for small blogs and publications, but you should take time to do more research for the medium to larger ones.

Bigger publications, especially top-tier newspapers and magazines, will have whole teams of people who cover different topics. Even specific topics can often have several people working on them — check out the travel section of any large newspaper and you’ll quickly see just how many writers there are.

It’s worth taking a bit of extra time to find out if there is more than one person who you could contact, and if so, making a note of all of them at the same time. You can then dig into each one a bit more to see who may be the most appropriate person to contact.

Keep an eye out for a few things in your research:

• How often they publish content: do they seem to be a regular writer or more like a guest writer?

• Are they on Twitter and if so, are they active? If they are, this may open up a way to engage with them and learn more about what they like writing about.

• What specific topics do they write about? Don’t write down “travel”, write down the specific niche within travel.

• Look at the headlines they use: are there any patterns in them, or anything you can learn about their reporting style?

Yes, this takes time. But it’s worth it because when you need to do outreach, you’re more likely to contact the right person and increase your chances of getting a reply and a link.

If you still find that your outreach is failing and you need to fix it quickly, check out this process and framework from Shannon McGuirk in her Whiteboard Friday.

2. Coming up with ideas for campaigns

Second in our list of challenges with 23% of respondents was coming up with ideas for their content campaigns. I fully understand why this is a challenge for many people, because knowing if an idea is good or bad can be very subjective. Not to mention, there’s a huge difference between a good idea and a good idea that will get links.

You may well come up with a solid idea for a piece of content that sits on your website and may get traffic, but it may not quite provoke someone to link to it over and over again. It’s important to understand this difference when coming up with ideas.

So, how can you overcome this challenge and come up with ideas that will work?

Develop a process and methodology

Not everyone will describe themselves as a creative person and unfortunately, those who describe themselves as not being creative will assume that they aren’t going to be very good at coming up with content ideas. Even if you’re at the opposite end of the spectrum here and believe that you are creative and can come up with ideas, having a solid process that guides you is a great way to ensure some consistency and save time.

Coming up with link-worthy content ideas can be hard, doing it over and over again is even harder — a process and methodology will help with this because it can be used repeatedly and across different sectors.

There are multiple processes that you can use here and there is not a single right answer, so here I just want to share a few that we use at Aira which may be helpful to you and point you in the right direction.

Content strategy framework

Our content strategy framework is designed to provoke ideas that are tied into the themes and topics that are most important to the brand that you’re working with. It also helps you understand which content formats are available to you and what the associated KPIs should be.

The last point is important because whilst links may be the focus, a great content campaign will add much more value and this should be acknowledged. For example, a campaign may also help you drive referral traffic to your website which could have value.

On the flip side, this framework also helps you demonstrate that some content campaigns will not lead directly to leads or customers — something that can be a common misunderstanding with some stakeholders. Using this framework lets you be explicit on what the primary KPIs for the campaign are, and when driving direct customers or revenue isn’t one of them.

Here is the framework itself, along with pointers for what each line means:

And here is an example of how it may look if we were working with a company who sell products to help you get a good night’s sleep:

Whilst this won’t define every single topic, it gives a solid starting point and importantly, keeps your ideas focused by making sure that they fit within the overarching themes and are linked to the right KPIs.

Audience pain points framework

Another methodology that we use at Aira revolves around the pain points of our client’s target audience, then connecting those pain points to solutions that the client can provide or create. There are there parts to this framework:

Audience: we work with the client to determine their core target audience for their products and keep this as tightly focused as possible on who they want their content to get in front of.

Pain points: we carry out research on this audience to understand what their main pain points are when it comes to the service or product that the client is offering.

Solutions: this is where we look at how the client currently solves these problems with either their products, services or content. This gives us a steer on where we ultimately need to be driving traffic to or if we need to create a new page.

Here is an example which imagines that we’re working with a company that helps people buy a home:

Once complete (although it’s never 100% complete, it’s an ongoing process) we can start to connect the dots between these three areas which can lead to campaign ideas.

For example, we may join the dots between these:

We could then base our idea generation around the target audience, their pain points and the solution offered by the client. This means that a campaign idea will be closely tied to the business and audience of the client, not going off on a tangent and reducing the value of the idea.

If you want to take a deep dive into the creative process, my go-to is always this deck from Mark Johnstone who also recently produced this report which picks apart 31 campaigns from different digital agencies to see what made those ideas work.

3. Getting approval for campaign ideas

Third in our list was getting approval for content ideas, with 20% of respondents saying that this was a challenge for them.

Having pitched many ideas to clients over the years, I understand how this can be a challenge, but it can also vary massively on a number of factors. The projects where I (or the team) have struggled most with sign-off are when we haven’t fully understood client expectations for the ideas.

The truth is that a lot of these expectations should be understood up front either when you sell a project or when you kick the project off. If you put together a creative brief, it should include questions that will help you ensure that the ideas you come up with are as likely as possible to be signed off.

Let’s look at the kinds of questions we need to be asking up front in order to do this and hopefully avoid pain further down the line.

Core topics and teasing out objections

Asking a client up front what topics they are happy to talk about can be useful, but won’t always unearth potential problems. Start by asking basic questions such as:

• What topics do you want your brand to be famous for?

• What topics would you say you’re credible to talk about?

• What topics does your audience resonate with?

• What questions do your customers always ask you?

This can give you a really good starting point but once you hear the answers, you need to go deeper. This involves a bit of thinking on your feet, but you should start to test the client at this point to see where their limits are and what they will and won’t sign off.

Take one of the topics they’ve mentioned and throw out a random example of using that idea, then do it again and again. Start to get a feel for how they react to ideas and listen carefully to what they say. They will start to give clues as to how they respond to ideas and what questions come into their mind.

For example, a reply may be “yeah, that would work but….” then they will give you a glimpse into potential problems. So this may become “yeah, that would work but we’d need sign off from our compliance team” or “yeah, that would work but Jenny in our data team would need to review it first.”

Off-topic ideas

Following on from this, it’s important to get an early understanding of what topics they want to steer clear of. Again, from experience, usual answers here may be fairly typical and not that helpful, such as a client wanting to steer clear of content that may be a bit risky or mention competitors. It’s not uncommon for companies to want to avoid political content being produced by a third party, even if the company doesn’t generally mind talking about political issues.

To try and dig deeper, repeat the process above and give some examples to test the boundaries a little and see how they respond. One way to do this is to ask about any previous campaigns that have gone wrong, not worked or caused issues for them internally or externally.

If you’re not dealing with the CEO, perhaps ask something like “if we wanted to produce an idea on this topic, what would your CEO say? How would she react?”. The additional benefit here is that you can start to see how internal dynamics between teams and the people above them works too.

Brand guidelines and tone

You need to ask how much they expect a piece of content to adhere to brand and tone of voice guidelines. Chances are that they want to make sure that content is consistent with their brand, but the extent of this can vary a lot depending on the business. Some will ask you to stick very, very closely to them whilst others will give you more freedom.

Knowing this is important because it can affect the ways in which you can execute an idea and sometimes, it will mean that some ideas aren’t feasible.

Format of presenting the ideas

When writing up and planning to present your ideas, don’t underestimate the importance of choosing the right format for delivery. This will change based on the client and quite often, how long you’ve been working with them.

At Aira, we have some clients who we’ve worked with for many years who know our process and team very well. These clients may only need a simple email with a summary of each idea in order to sign off or to ask a few questions.

This will be different for a client who is brand new and perhaps hasn’t run any campaigns before. This one will need a lot more detail and probably a full presentation with details/data attached so that they can fully understand everything.

Getting the format wrong up front is a sure fire way to put yourself on the backfoot, no matter how good the ideas may be.

4. Finding enough domains to get links from

Fourth on the list from our respondents, with 13% of them saying it was a challenge, was finding enough domains to get links from. This appears to be a relatively small challenge and even in competitive sectors, there are usually plenty of domains out there that are relevant to the campaign that you’re producing.

There are plenty of guides out there which give away lots of techniques and processes for finding link prospects, here are a few:

• How to Find Sites That Will Want to Link to Your Content

• The Beginner’s Guide to Finding Link Targets

• Building Your Outreach List

To add to these, I want to encourage you to also think carefully about the attributes of the domains that you’re trying to find and not to obsess too much over “SEO metrics”. Let me explain.

I believe more and more that Google passes value across links in very different ways than they used to. Essentially, Google can pass more or less PageRank across a link based on a number of attributes associated with that link. The concept of this has been around for many years and Bill Slawski has written about how Google may do this here.

Whilst not new, this is one area where I believe Google can (and does) refine more and more as time passes. If we assume that links will remain a core ranking signal for a while yet, it stands to reason that Google will refine the signals within it, of which, there will be many.

Side note: our State of Link Building Report also asked respondents if they felt that links as a ranking signal would still exist in five years time, many believed they would:

The belief reduces a little if we look ten years into the future, but the majority still said yes:

Back to our core point, I believe that it’s important to think about the attributes of links that Google may look at in order to define value, but also to think about what is valuable to you beyond pure SEO or ranking value.

Here are some examples:

• Links that send traffic to you

• Links from domains that your audience frequently visits

• Links from domains that you don’t already have

• Links from domains that your competitors have (and don’t have)

• Links from domains that have high levels of traffic

When you start to do link prospecting with these kinds of attributes in mind, you start to think a little bit differently and you naturally lean toward quality over quantity. These are the links that Google wants to reward now and in the future.

5. Design and development of ideas

Finally, in last place in our survey was getting the design and development of ideas. Only 10% of our respondents listed this as a challenge.

We don’t spend too much time on this but here are a few tips for making sure that your content campaign doesn’t fail at this point.

Don’t start with the format

As tempting as it can be, try to avoid any bias toward a certain format or type of execution before your idea is fully fleshed out. For example, try to avoid starting by saying “I want to do a map” or “I want to do an interactive infographic”. Let the idea lead to an appropriate format by asking yourself what the best way to communicate your idea is.

This could lead to a range of options:

• Blog post

• Long-form guide

• Infographic

• Tweet thread

• Video

• Slidedeck

• Whitepaper

The list can go on and you get the idea.

You should still be aware of what content formats can work and keep an internal log of your campaigns to see which ones work best, but don’t let yourself get caught up in the format. A successful campaign that was an interactive piece most likely worked because the idea behind it was strong, not just because it was interactive.

Don’t let the idea get lost

Leading on from the previous point, it’s very easy for a core idea to be lost when it goes through the process of being designed and developed. If we imagine that the core idea has come from one or two people, who have then passed it along to a designer, maybe a developer and also other stakeholders who have given feedback, it’s very easy for the core idea to be diluted.

It’s important to be clear about the core idea and why that idea is so crucial to the success of a campaign at all stages. When you brief a designer, start with the idea. When you pitch the idea to a stakeholder, start with the idea. When you start to do QA on designs and development environments, keep the core idea in mind.

Be aware of restrictions

The design and development of an idea can fall down very easily if you present something that can’t be executed on the company website. For example, if you’re unable to upload interactive content or you have to publish content within an existing template, this is going to cause blockers with design and development. It’s important to be aware of these up front so that you can design and build content that can be published.

To wrap up: every step is a challenge, but is also important

Despite some steps being harder than others, the truth is that you need all steps to be doing their bit and pulling their weight if you’re going to end up with a successful campaign.

Outreach becomes easier when you have a great idea.

Coming up with ideas becomes easier when you have a good brief.

Implementing a design becomes easier when the idea is clear and compelling already

You get the idea. Take time to understand the process in full and optimize each step as much as you can, whilst allowing for flexibility and for people to be creative and do what they think is best.

The 100% Free Tech SEO (+ Beyond) Site Audit Checklist

For SEO agencies, consultants, and website owners

As an SEO consultant, I was always on the lookout for a good SEO audit checklist. One that I could use and present to my clients. One I could modify to my own needs. One that covered all the important SEO bases. One that was up-to-date. And importantly, one that I didn't have to pay several hundred dollars for.

This, my SEO friends, is that checklist. And Moz is making it available to you.

One cool thing about this audit checklist is that you can perform it almost entirely 100% for free, or using free versions of SEO tools. This is important for SEO starting out on a budget, or small business owners who want to learn to audit a small site on their own.

That said, if you're looking to audit medium/large sites or more than a few pages at a time, you likely want to look into more scalable solutions, such as our Moz Pro Site Crawl including our new Performance Metrics Beta.

Regardless, you're probably ready to dive in...

Get The Audit Checklist

Admittedly, we're big fans of a lot of good SEO audit checklists out there, including Annielytics Site Audit Checklist, Andy Drinkwater's Checklist, and the audits available at SEOSLY.

We also like the audit checklist by Benjamin Estes over at BrainLabs, in particular, the pass/fail selector for each item. While our own audit is substantially different, we incorporated this feature into our own.

Site Audit Coverage

Originally, we set out to create a solid technical SEO audit checklist — one that covered all the important technical SEO areas which could have a significant impact on rankings/traffic and could be completed in a short amount of time.

As we created the audit, we realized that SEOs also want to check other traffic-impacting site issues that aren't necessarily technical. Hence, we ended up with a more complete Technical SEO and beyond site audit — one that covers nearly every important SEO area with the potential to impact traffic and rankings.

Briefly, the audit checklist covers:

1. Basics

Here you take a few quick steps to set your audit up for success: making sure you have analytics installed, Search Console access set up, and optionally, running a site crawl. Go to Basics.

2. Crawling & Indexing

Covering the foundations of technical SEO, the crawling and indexing section of the audit makes sure that search engines can find, crawl, and index your content without challenge. Go to Crawling & Indexing.

3. Meta & Structured Data

Both metadata and structured data have become increasingly complex in SEO. Here we include 8 quick checks to ensure maximum visibility in all types of search results. Go to Meta & Structured Data.

4. Content

Content isn't often considered "technical" SEO, but many technical issues with the content itself can impact indexing and rankings. Beyond the quality of the content itself, these technical issues need to be checked and addressed. Go to Content.

5. Links & Navigation

Links are the roads that hold your site together and connect it to the larger internet around the world. Google uses links in a variety of ways to rank content, so here we include 8 brief audits to make sure your links are optimized for crawling and ranking. Go to Links & Navigation.

6. Images

Images not only add relevance to web pages, but also improve engagement, and can help with rankings. Additionally, Google Images is one of the largest search engines by itself in the world. Here we include 5 quick checks to make sure your images are up to snuff. Go to Images.

7. Video

Videos play an increasingly important role on the web, but in truth, many sites pay no attention to video SEO. This is one area where Google simply won't "figure it out" without solid, technical SEO. Here are 4 audit items to make sure your videos can rank. Go to Video.

8. Mobile

Google is now mobile-first! (Well, almost there.) Most SEO audits take place on desktop, but doing a few quick mobile checks can make the difference between ranking or not. Go to Mobile.

9. Speed

Ready for Core Web Vitals? In truth, page speed has been important to SEO for years, and now there's more attention to it than ever. Go to Speed.

10. Security

Many SEOs often overlook security issues, but Google takes it very seriously. Beyond implementing HTTPS, there are a couple of areas you want to check if your site experiences problems. Go to Security.

11. International & Multilingual Sites

This optional section applies if your site targets multiple languages and/or regions. Implementing hreflang and international targeting is a technically tricky area, so you want to make sure you get it right. Go to International & Multilingual Sites.

12. Backlinks

While backlinks are only rarely included in a technical SEO audit, a lack of relevant backlinks is often the number one reason good, relevant content struggles to rank. While this doesn't represent a complete link audit, we recommend a few quick link checks to make sure you aren't leaving rankings behind. Go to Backlinks.

Get The Audit Checklist

This is a living document. That means we'll work to keep this audit checklist up-to-date as SEO changes, so be sure to check back for new updates. If you have any additions or suggestions, please let us know in the comments below.

To your SEO auditing success!

Moz Acquired by iContact Marketing Corp

Exciting news, Moz fans! We are thrilled to announce that Moz has been acquired by iContact Marketing Corp!

Our readers know how critical SEO work is when it comes to the success of marketing strategies, and as an industry leader, Moz was the natural choice for iContact's expansion into the SEO space. If you’re not familiar with them, iContact and its sibling brands —Campaigner,SMTP, andKickbox — together operate as a subsidiary of J2 Global (NASDAQ: JCOM). They help small and mid-sized businesses reach and retain loyal customers with advanced email marketing automation tools. As part of the iContact family, Moz will be even better equipped to assist our subscribers with all of their SEO and digital marketing needs.

I sat down with Michael Pepe, President of iContact Marketing Corp, to talk more about the acquisition. Check it out below to learn what this means for Moz!

Video Transcription

Sarah: Hi, everyone. I'm Sarah Bird. I'm the CEO of Moz, and I've got some exciting, very exciting, very significant news to share with you all and I have invited Michael Pepe here to share with me. Michael, will you introduce yourself?

Michael: I sure will. Thank you very much, Sarah. So I'm Michael Pepe, and I serve as the President of iContact Marketing. And we do have some very exciting news to share today because Moz has been acquired by iContact.

Sarah: Wow, that feels so good to say.

Michael: Me too, publicly.

Sarah: At last. It's time. At last. I love it. Why don't you share a little bit about iContact?

Michael: Sure, sure. So iContact is an iconic brand in email marketing, and along with its sister brands, Campaigner, SMTP, Communicator, and Kickbox, all of those brands really focus on the email marketing needs of small to midsize customers. And it's a big business. Last year we delivered 68 billion emails.

Sarah: Woo, nice work.

Michael: Big. Big. So . . .

Sarah: Wow, that's impressive.

Michael: . . . I'm sure there's no one on the call who's not heard of Moz. But for the handful who may not have . . .

Sarah: Yeah.

Michael: . . . tell us about Moz, Sarah.

Sarah: Yeah, Moz is an SEO company through and through, from our earliest days, you know, 15 years ago when we started understanding and teaching about SEO through the blog and then really thought through how much more people we could help if we got more data behind our suggestions and then transitioned to being a software company. And so from the core has been this desire to help people understand and master a really complex, a complex marketing practice that is so vital and data driven. So some of our data stats, you know, we have over 40.7 trillion links, and we have over 1.2 million websites tracked, and we have over 500 million keyword suggestions. And all of that is to help people make better, smarter SEO decisions, whether you are at a small company or you're at a big company, whether you're a beginner in your SEO journey or whether you've been doing this for a very, very long time. And I love that we have that in common, Michael. iContact and Moz, they all want to help as many people as possible, and we're very focused on two core marketing strategies that are just as vital for organizations today as they've ever been.

Michael: Absolutely. And, you know, what I think sets Moz apart is the fact that you do focus on the size, quality, and accuracy of your data, but to be able to translate that data into insights to help marketers of all levels of sophistication, companies of all sizes, I think that's truly remarkable and sets Moz apart. And, Sarah, you know we've been talking for some time. This is not a new idea that we came up with last week.

Sarah: Right.

Michael: And, you know, we've just added, you know, a long list of reasons of why our two companies belong together. And maybe just it would help to share a few of those ideas on the call.

Sarah: Yeah, I bet people are real curious. Yeah, what's the why? Give us the why, Michael.

Michael: Focus on the same customers and serving small to midsize customers. If we ask our customers, which we do routinely, what the number one tool that they need, beyond email, it's undoubtedly SEO. So there's a great pairing of SEO and email marketing. And I would say that I think really importantly Moz is a value-driven company. And particularly in this day and age, you know, we live in a complex ecosystem that involves our customers, our colleagues, our partners. And to be able to think about supporting all of their needs and having all of those components thrive I think has really been an agenda on Moz's part and one that we believe in wholeheartedly ourselves, you know, to really think about values, integrity, and principle to drive ourselves forward. And so I think that we not only share values, but we have a shared future together.

Sarah: Yes. Oh, Michael, you said it so well. I can't say it better myself, so I will only add to that, that, you know, Moz is going to thrive in this new family, and I know that for certain because I know that you guys genuinely understand the value of SEO and are excited to share that with your broader customers. And really, we know that email is critical and will remain critical. It's not going anywhere. It's just getting better. And we have the shared values. So what more do we need, right? I think that together we can and will accomplish great things for all of our customers. So excited to make it to this moment with you and to start running towards that future together. So thank you so much.

Michael: Thank you. The future is bright.

Sarah: It is. All right, everyone, thank you and watch our blog. Stay tuned. More to come.

Michael: Bye.

Does Fixing Old Broken Links Still Matter to SEO?

Fixing broken links has long stood as an SEO best practice. But if you've run into situations where you've fixed a broken link and nothing happened, you’re not alone. In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, SEO expert Cyrus Shepard discusses whether these fixes still matter, and takes you through steps to increase your chances of seeing the benefits.

For more link building tips, be sure to check out our recent update to The Beginner’s Guide to Link Building:

Read the Guide!

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Cyrus Shepard. I am a full-time SEO consultant, working here with Moz. Today I want to talk to you about a subject I saw on Twitter that I thought was really interesting: Does fixing old broken links still matter to SEO?

Now I thought this was a great question because fixing broken links is an SEO best practice. You read about it all the time. But if you've been doing SEO long enough, like I have, you've run into situations where you've fixed a broken link, or you found a page with hundreds of broken links, maybe thousands of broken links, you fixed it, you redirected it to a new target, and nothing happened.

So does this happen all the time? Is this common? Has Google changed the way it treats broken links? What's going on here, what are best practices, and what steps can we take to increase our chances of seeing a benefit from fixing broken links? That's what we're going to talk about today. 

Why we fix broken links

So let's start off with why do we fix broken links. This is the basic stuff, the introduction.

Links pass link signals. Google uses links for things like PageRank and anchor text. So when they find links, they can give you a rankings boost. When a page 404s when those links break, when they go to a page that doesn't work, those link signals don't have a chance to pass anymore, and that can hurt your SEO. Usually these are caused by one of two reasons.

One, the link itself is just bad. It points to a page that doesn't exist on your website or something like that. There's a weird parameter in it. Someone typed it in wrong. But oftentimes pages break on your own site. You remove a page and you don't redirect it to another page. A combination of these factors means that on any given site you can find tens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of links sometimes because this is a very common scenario.

So that's why we fix broken links, to regain that link juice and get that ranking benefit that Google is looking for. So it's supposed to work and oftentimes it does work and a lot of times it's great. But there are times when it doesn't work. 

Why it might not work

So what could be going on here during these times that it doesn't work? So here are four reasons why fixing broken links may not be effective in certain situations.

1. The links didn't count

First of all, the links may not have counted in the first place. The truth is there are a lot of links Google just doesn't count. These could be spam links, manipulative links, or links they find that are non-editorial. Just because a tool reports a link as being broken or pointing to a non-existent page doesn't mean that link actually has value. So that could be one reason why fixing the broken link may not work.

2. The links were low value

Second reason, Google may have counted those links, but they were considered low value or not fresh. Consider a link on a page that's a broken link from a page that's 10 years old. It doesn't have very much traffic or no traffic. It's buried at the bottom. No one even visits this page. Google doesn't even rank it.

Would you expect Google to attach a lot of value by fixing that broken link? Probably not. So a lot of times when you're fixing broken links, you may find low value, not fresh links, pages that aren't updated. They may not pass a lot of value and fixing them may not have a lot of benefit. 

3. You redirected to an irrelevant URL

Third, and this is a really common reason, you fixed the link, but you redirected it to an irrelevant URL or a URL that's not as pertinent.

We see this a lot with sites that discontinue an entire section and they redirect everything to the homepage. They get rid of a subdomain. They redirect to a category page or something like that. Google will often report these as soft 404s, meaning they see your redirect, but they don't think the page that you're redirecting to is as relevant as the original page or the page that was broken or intended to be there in the first place.

So that's another reason why Google may not pass these link signals through these links when they see a soft 404 or they see you redirecting to a page that just isn't as relevant as the original. 

4. Google may not rely on "live" links

The fourth reason it may not work, there's this phenomenon, this theory that Google may not rely on live links, that these link signals don't necessarily have to be there all the time for Google to pass value to them.

Now Google advises us, when we do redirects, to leave those redirects in place for a year. Now why would they say a year? The theory is that after a year any value in those link signals has already passed. Rand Fishkin noticed this phenomenon and named it ghost links several years ago, where links that no longer exist might already have passed their value.

So sometimes we don't really know how Google treats these older links. But sometimes it may not be necessary for links to be live for them to pass value, so fixing them doesn't really have an impact. Again, this is an area where we don't have a lot of insight into how Google actually works, but it's possible that the link signals have simply passed on their relevance anyway.

5 broken link building best practices

So what can we do about it? What can we do about these situations to maximize fixing old broken links on our website? So here are my five best practices. 

1. DO fix broken links

One, yes, you should fix broken links. Do continue to fix broken links, because we don't know which links Google isn't counting, and there are several, often many instances where it does work and you can see a benefit.

Plus it's just a good user experience. When users are coming from one URL to another, they don't want to see broken pages, and those link signals can pass relevance and value to Google. 

2. Prioritize pages with high authority

Two, prioritize pages and links with high authority. Your site may have thousands of broken links or millions of broken links. You don't need to fix all of them. But what you want to prioritize are the high value links, the pages with lots of links pointing to them, or links from pages that have lots of value themselves.

We score pages here at Moz on a value called Page Authority. A lot of SEO tools have different metrics that help rank pages based on links. So fix the pages with your highest number of links, your highest Page Authority or whatever score you're using, and prioritize links from pages themselves that also have high Page Authority. These are going to be your most valuable links to fix. 

3. Prioritize links with freshness signals

Third, we want to prioritize links with freshness signals. We want to avoid these 10-year-old pages. Well, we don't necessarily need to avoid them, but we want to prioritize the most important pages. So what are freshness signals? Generally, we want to prioritize links from pages that get traffic themselves, that are regularly updated, that get links coming to them.

There are many, many different types of freshness signals. There's an old post I wrote a while back. We'll link to it in the transcript below. But we definitely want to prioritize those links that have the highest value. 

4. Redirect to relevant URLs

Fourth, we want to make sure we're redirecting to relevant URLs. You don't want to redirect everything to your homepage or necessarily a category page that's off-topic.

A question to ask is: Does the page you're redirecting to rank for the same types of keywords as the old URL? Or would it provide a good user experience to someone coming from the old link, or would the user be confused? The closer you are in topicality to the original page, the more likely those link signals are to pass from one target onto another.

Ideally, you're linking to the exact same page and it just happens to be a broken page and you can fix it and it's relevant and everything is great. But in cases where you can't redirect to a relevant page, as close as possible or maybe you just shouldn't redirect at all, because 404s are okay. They're a natural part of the internet. It's not always bad to have a 404.

5. You don't need to fix every link

Which brings us to best practice number five, you don't have to fix every link. This happens all the time. Broken links are a natural part of the internet. Moz, if we go into our broken links report, we have tens of thousands of broken links. It would not be worth our time to fix every one of them, and it would be a waste of money and effort. But fixing the good ones, fixing the ones with high authority, with freshness signals, and redirecting to relevant URLs or the original URLs, those are the ones that are going to have value.

So you don't want to give your developers a list of 10,000 broken links and say, "Hey, fix all these." They're going to be mad at you, and you're not going to see the value out of it. So if you want some tips on how to fix broken links, how to find those high value links, we have a video from Dr. Pete on tips on exactly how to do that using Moz. You can use many other tools.

Google Search Console and others are great at this. So yes, fix those broken links. You don't have to fix all of them. That's how you're going to get the value. Leave us your tips in the comments below. Thanks, everybody.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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 Tweet your questions and comments about broken link building using #MozBlog!

The Maker SERP Squeeze: Why Should SEOs Care?

Hey folks, this is Russ Jones, Adjunct Search Scientist here at Moz and Principal Search Scientist at System1. I want to talk today about a long-standing theory in search engine optimization, which generally goes like this: reviewers, aggregators, and non-manufacturing retailers will, over time, push makers and manufacturers out of the SERPs. The recent Google Product Reviews Update is just one further step down this long path leading away from makers and manufacturers. Let’s dive in.

Who’s who?

Before we get started, we need at least a few definitions. What is the difference between a reviewer, aggregator, distributor, non-manufacturing retailer, and a “maker”?

1. Reviewer: A site like Tom’s Guide or PCMag uses its industry credibility and writers to produce comparison guides for products. They’re normally funded by advertising or affiliate agreements.

2. Aggregators: While I have no clear sitewide example, these are content providers that rely on the ratings of other sites to determine the content, whole cloth.

3. Non-manufacturing retailers: While there is some overlap here as many retailers have gotten into the manufacturing game, these are sites like Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, and Overstock.

4. Makers: These are businesses that both make and sell their products. They can be big brands like Blue Buffalo and Apple, or smaller businesses like Hardcore Hammers or Eley Hose Reels.

Why should we care?

This is a fair question. Do we really care about the performance of maker/manufacturers on Google as some sort of moral or ethical measure? I think we should, so let me give you just a few brief reasons why before examining the evidence of the squeeze:

1. Bias filtering: Each class of site (reviewer, aggregator, retailer, and maker) have a different set of biases that can only be overcome by weighing each one against another. Reviewers and aggregators tend to be paid by ads or affiliate agreements, which can incentivize dishonesty. Retailers are paid by the sale of products on their shelves, thus they also have an incentive to be dishonest in rankings. And makers themselves have a self-bias. It’s the middle of the Venn Diagram of these data sources that makes good decisions possible.

2. Innovation: I wouldn’t be the first to point out the perverse system of startup funding, which has — at best — an unbalanced impact on who and what gets produced. If startups that produce a truly amazing product must pay their pound of flesh to the gatekeepers (reviewers, aggregators, and retailers) from the offset because direct, organic e-commerce is no longer an option, there’s an unnatural filter on what is produced and by who.

3. Finally, and this is the most important reason we should care: Google has a vested interest in pushing maker/manufacturers out of their organic results because they represent a massive advertising market. I want to be clear, here: I’m not accusing Google of intentionally doing this. Proving intent is one of the hardest things you can do without actual admission. However, if it is part of a growing pattern of Google pushing businesses out of organic, making them rely on ads, we should pay attention.

Now, I will be the first to admit that this isn’t the most exciting subject. Most websites aren’t maker/manufacturers, so you may be tempted to dismiss this research as simply irrelevant to your activities as an SEO or webmaster. However, I think that it’s important we understand directional trends that are driven economically and algorithmically in Google — it’s a way of thinking and planning, a strategy wrapped in a cautionary tale.

Is the trend real?

While access to data on Google and its algorithm has never been easy to obtain, there are good sources for historical SERPs. As a brief side note, I want to emphasize the importance of rank tracking, as it remains a primary source of information well beyond where your site currently ranks for a keyword. It allows us to investigate much larger trends, behaviors, and updates, all of which help us do our jobs better.

So, what does the data show? I took 50 singular, superlative product terms in the form of “best {product type}” and accessed the top 10 search results for that term in the month of January over the last nine years. I specifically chose singular terms like “best blender” so as not to intentionally bias the search results towards rankings where the intent was clearly for comparisons. (Asking “what is the best blender?” versus “what are the best blenders?” is an important distinction.)

Thus, we’re looking at 500 data points for each year from 2013 through 2021. Each website that ranked in these cohorts was labeled by hand to identify whether a site was a reviewer, aggregator, non-manufacturing retailer, or maker/manufacturer.

I compiled a number of statistics with relation to the categorization of a site and its likelihood to rank. The first, most straightforward question to ask is whether there is any “squeeze” at all, so to speak.

Are maker/manufacturers less likely to rank for singular product terms in 2021 than they were in 2013? The results are, frankly, stunning.

Between 2013 and 2016, roughly 50% of the SERPs collected in January included at least one maker/manufacturer. This is a very important data point, in my estimation, because it reveals that the search result was — at least in principle — capable of delivering the user to the answer of “what is the best {product}” rather than through an intermediary (non maker/manufacturers). Given the expectation of at least some diversity in results, a reasonable user should expect that on some occasions, Google could actually identify what is (based on some set of metrics) the best product of a certain type and include it in the top 10.

Something dramatic happened between January 2016 and 2017, but there are no clear updates that would target just this type of site and type of query, at least from a cursory review of update histories. Nevertheless, we see a stunning drop to just 15% (from 50%) in a single year. The trend continued such that by 2020 and 2021, out of the 50 terms and 500 rankings, only one was a maker/manufacturer. One. 

In order to further confirm the trend, I followed the average (mean) ranking position for maker/manufacturers that were in the top 10 over that same time period. What’s interesting in this equation is that we see a much smoother line between 2017 and 2020 in rankings drop for maker/manufacturers. While many just dropped out of the top 10 in the first year (2017), the losses were steady over the next few years.

This additional information indicates that the trend is continuing, and that other maker/manufacturers who are holding on to rankings for these types of generic terms may not have much time left.

But there is another insult to injury in this trend, which was well articulated by Dr. Pete in 2015’s “The Incredible Shrinking SERP”. You see, once the mean position for maker/manufacturers passed the number 8 spot, they were at great risk of being removed from the first page altogether.

By 2019, for the same set of terms, the average SERP had nine or fewer results. This meant that the remaining maker/manufacturer pages were no longer on page 1. Effectively, 0% of maker/manufacturers benefited directly from organic traffic for these singular, superlative terms.

Maybe users prefer reviews, comparisons, & aggregators

When considering the many reasons why this might occur aside from the simplest explanation that Google decided it didn’t trust the maker/manufacturer websites, the thought came to mind that perhaps users just prefer comparison pages. This would be a charitable explanation and, as an information query, users would want to find a variety of sources that help them make an informed decision. However, I think there are several problems with this assessment.

Let’s take the example of “best mattress topper”, one of the 50 queries tested as part of this project. The first clue that there is more to the story than simply trying to include good review and comparison content is that Google chooses to include non-advertisement products in the search results! Instead of pages, they use a carousel.

There are several important points to make about this inclusion of a product carousel:

1. They prove that Google is aware, at least to some degree, that users would like to know exactly what the best topper is and be able to click immediately to that product.

2. Two of the first four in the carousel are not mentioned at all, anywhere, in the top 10 comparison reviews, while later items are.

3. They do not appear to be ordered with any relation to popularity, rating, or relevance to the query.

4. They indicate that Google has significant entity information on the products in question.

It’s a strange occurrence that Google knows users want the product (the answer to the question, not links to pages that answer the question), and that they have the product information but choose not to use it to either link directly to the maker/manufacturer, OR to rank the product carousel based on data extracted from the top reviews and comparisons that fill the organic rankings. But I think it gets worse.

Google’s product review update

Google announced an update that would target reviews and comparisons to ensure quality results. Among the many expectations listed in the update were knowledge about the product, what sets it apart from competitors, and providing quantitative measures. There is something incredibly important about this type of request of webmasters:

1. Either Google is in the position where it knows this information and will be able to validate it in an effort to determine which reviews and comparison sites are trustworthy,

2. Or Google is in the position where it does not know this information, and will only be able to compare this information from site to site in order to identify trustworthiness.

If Google is in scenario #1, then they have the capability to aggregate the results from the current review and comparison pages and determine the truthfulness of their statements (insofar as they are not merely opinion). If they’re in scenario #2, they have absolutely no business judging reviews and comparison sites until they’ve elevated their algorithmic capabilities, in order to use comparative data to determine truthfulness, thus warranting a move up to position #1!

In any scenario, Google should be capable of extracting the answer — or at least handful of answers — to these queries using their entity knowledge, product knowledge, link graph, and information extraction capabilities, which allow them to send traffic directly to the makers and manufacturers rather than intermediaries.

For example, we know that the two companies with the most listings in the top 10 reviews and comparisons are Tempur-Pedic (8 top 10 listings) and Viscosoft (7 top 10 listings). Tempur-Pedic does enjoy the second listing in the product carousel but that, of course, does not link to Tempur-Pedic’s product but rather to another Google listing of products filled with ads.

We have a word for this in our marketing lexicon: nothing more than a glorified interstitial.

Perhaps Viscosoft has a more egregious position. Despite nearly edging out the top position among the organic comparison sites, their products occur nowhere within the 24 products in the product carousel, despite having the highest ranking maker/manufacturer page for best mattress topper at #18!

Maybe they aren’t in this supposed “organic product carousel” because of this:

Why would Google ever choose to add a product to their carousel if they can’t ultimately make money off of it? The Viscosoft mattress topper search result page, as of this writing, has no ads.

The sad reality: Google hasn’t learned its lesson

Despite congressional inquiry and incredible research performed by Rand Fishkin and many others proving that Google is doing everything they can to keep you on Google, it appears that they are still intent on capturing potential customers into a giant click jail where the only way out is to click on an ad. But what is more egregious in this case is not that Google is merely keeping you on their site, but that they have a non-ad-labeled carousel called “Popular products” that clicks through to a special advertising experience search result (which we can trigger with specific search parameters, all of which is documented below.

Step 1: Popular products

Step 2: Specialized ad experience interstitial

Step 3: You can change the query, but retain the right bar ad experience.

Takeaways

I wish there was some good news for takeaways, but I just don’t really see much in the way of things getting better for maker/manufacturers. There are strategies, of course, but most of them will involve getting other sites to sell or market your product rather than your own.

The new review guidelines explicitly state that you should compare products to their competitors, which is a huge legal risk for most maker/manufacturers. This leaves them in a really difficult situation: either try to get your product reviewed by honest sites (which is an incredibly difficult task often requiring giving away free products that then must be acknowledged in the review), or spending money advertising or selling on major retailers and marketplaces like Amazon.

But if there is one thing we do know, it’s that there is no reason to believe that Google will actually list the best product or its site in the search results any time soon — there is too much money to be made by putting Google Ads between the user and the product.