6 Money-Making Content Formats SaaS Companies Should Prioritize — Whiteboard Friday

In today’s Whiteboard Friday episode, expert content strategist Chima Mmeje talks you through the six top content formats SaaS brand can focus on to drive revenue.

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Video Transcription

Hi, my name is Chima Mmeje, and I am a SaaS content strategist at zenithcopy.com. I write long-form content, and I also use topic clusters as a form of content strategy for SaaS companies. Today, I'm talking to you about six moneymaking content formats to prioritize for SaaS companies.

Now, before I get into all of this, I just want to start by saying that when building clusters or when doing research or when creating content, you should always start from the bottom to increase your chances of ranking and then make your way to the top. The reason being that at the top of the funnel, the keywords are extremely competitive, it has tons of search volume, and the likelihood of a small business or of a small website ranking for those keywords is very rare, in fact, almost never happens.

But if you start from the bottom, then you can pick one keyword, one keyword, one keyword, rank for those, make your way to the middle, and then at the top, use your pillar contents to bring everything together. Don't get greedy. All right. Now that we have that, I'm just going to show you six keywords that I think have the most impact for moneymaking at the bottom of the funnel.

1. Best

The first one is best of keyword. Now, this keyword is so good because it actually fits into the funnel at the middle or at the bottom. It's also a review type of content. Examples, best SEO tool for beginners, best free SEO tools, best SEO tool for link building, best keyword research tool. Okay, this is a sales enablement asset because it's personalized to specific problems that the audience is facing.

This is not just SEO tool reviews. This is SEO tool reviews for beginners. This is SEO tool reviews for link building. All of them performing specific function. Now, what this type of content does is that it allows you to showcase your brand. It gives 10, 15 other competitors, tells the audience what all these other tools do, but positions your brand as the best option for them.

Now, example, I was trying to get a tool for podcast. I was thinking of creating a podcast for the FCDC. When I was doing my research, I found some of these best of tools for podcasts. And two of the things that stood out was Audacity and another brand name I can't really remember.

Now, my entire search, my entire search journey started and ended with best podcast tool. And right there, I made my decision. So it's a great asset for people who don't have time or who don't want to read content at the top, middle, bottom. They can just start and end their search with this type of content. While users usually trust third-party review websites because they believe they don't have a vested interest, you should also take control of the narrative by creating this content and showing up on SERP, because subconsciously, you're building trust.

If they read your content before ending on a third-party review website, they already associate your brand with that solution. 

2. Sales enablement

All right. Next one, sales enablement content. Now, it doesn't get a lot of love. It doesn't get a lot of appreciation because it's always working in the background. But this is the cream of type of content format to create. Reason being that if you get it right, the right sales enablement content is going to move someone from, "Is this the right solution for me?" to, "This is definitely what I need to be getting." Examples, video testimonials, case studies, personalized landing pages, white papers, product demos. Now I want to just a little bit dig into how you can use this to solve problems for your audience. Video testimonials.

Say a user comes to you and they have specific problems. You've built your buyer personas, you've marked out the problems that the audience is facing, and you've linked solutions from your product to each of those problems that the audience faces. Now, you're not just going to send them generic video testimonials. You're going to send them video testimonials that you've created talking about how your product solves a problem, not just any problem, a specific problem for a specific user base.

Now, if you send that personalized video to the user or to the prospect, they can see themself in that person that they are watching, and by seeing themself in that person, they feel that this solution was created for them. It's the same thing with case study. It's the same thing with personalized landing pages. It's the same thing with product demos and white papers.

They cannot be generalized. You have to map them into the buyer's journey. You have to map them into your buyer personas that you've built, and you have to map them into problems and solutions for it to work. 

3. Competitor comparison pages

Next one, competitor comparison pages. Now, these pages are so great.

I love them because it allows you to show how your brand works against a competitor performing a similar function. Now, the mistake that a lot of the SaaS companies make is that they trash their competitors when creating competitor pages. That means you're just focusing all of your attention talking about what your competitor does, and I can't really tell how you're better.

What you should be doing instead is that you should be mining reviews from review sites, like Capterra, G2 and the rest of them, looking for themes of complaints that your audience has against these competitors, and then using those problems that you've identified to reverse-engineer and show how your product solves those specific problems. That way, someone who is looking for an alternative to Aurelius, maybe they're coming from EnjoyHQ or Dovetail and they've seen that you've identified the problems they faced with EnjoyHQ or Dovetail, now understand why Aurelius is a better choice than EnjoyHQ or Dovetail.

Same with Aurelius versus Dovetail. Now, another misconception is that it has to be either Aurelius or Dovetail writing this competitor review. No, it doesn't have to be Aurelius or Dovetail. EnjoyHQ can also create content on these two. What they do is that their objective, they say Aurelius does this, Dovetail does this, and then at the end, they use the conclusion to sell themself.

They find common themes of problems that these two have. What are the problems that they've mined from this that also happens in this? Then they use that in the conclusion to show how they solve both problems in one solution. An example is PandaDoc. PandaDoc created a solution or rather they created a competitor landing page for DocuSign and HelloSign.

At the end, they mention the word "free." They said DocuSign and HelloSign only give you three e-signatures every month, but they will give you unlimited e-signatures. Already that has captured my attention. That has convinced me because if I'm just looking for only e-signatures, then I'm not going to go to HelloSign or DocuSign.

I'm going to go to PandaDoc that gives me unlimited e-signatures. Now, same thing with reviews. There's a misconception that third-party review websites are the only ones that Google likes to rank or that people trust when reading reviews. But I think you can take control of the narrative if you remain objective, when reviewing your competitors, and then focus on the core features that you do better.

That is why it's so important to personalize your reviews using this kind of best X, specific problem, specific audience style when creating reviews, so it's not just generic. 

4. Pricing pages

Now, next one, pricing pages. This is a core brand asset.

It's navigational keyword. You do not want your competitors ranking for your pricing pages. A mistake I keep seeing is that pricing pages, they just mention generic features and then they put the price at the bottom. The more expensive your tool is, the more the onus is on you to justify your pricing by showing the features that are important to the audience. So you don't just have generic pricing pages.

You have done your market research. You've done your audience research. What is the solution that they are looking for? In order of importance, you start to list those solutions on your pricing pages because that makes them feel like this tool is worth paying for. Now, if you have add-ons on your tool, and as your tool becomes more popular, you start to notice that people, the way that your audience searches for the pricing page on Google or other search engines changes.

This is a generic search for Zoom, Zoom pricing, how much is Zoom. But as you start having more add-ons, like Zoom Webinar, you start seeing people not just searching for Zoom pricing but searching for that specific add-on pricing. This was a search that I made when I was thinking of using Zoom Webinar for the FCDC. All right.

5. Modifiers to download something

Next one, modifiers to download something. This is just an essential group of content to create because it allows you to capture emails, and you need those emails to feed something for your email team to build content around. Now, examples, free templates, free plan. You can see I keep mentioning the word "free" because "free" is a magic word that gets people to listen and click. So what you do with that, when you're doing your keyword research, you can just filter by typing in the word template, plan, checklist, calculator, spreadsheet, playbook, infographic, ebook, and then the search results from your keyword results is going to just start showing only researched information that mentions these things.

You can just click on all of that, export it into a Google spreadsheet and then use that to start creating content. Another way to find content that requires downloadable assets is when you plug in that keyword on Google SERP, the SERP is going to tell you if you need to create an asset for it.

The third way is to look at the content and then ask yourself, "Will this content be more actionable with an asset?" For example, if you create something that requires a calculator, even if nothing on the SERP is showing calculator, then it makes sense to provide that asset. If you're the first person to provide that asset, then you've given yourself an edge.

You've given your user something more than everyone else, and very soon, you start to notice that other people start following you. 

6. Personalized landing pages

Finally, personalized landing pages. This only works if you know your audience and the problems that your product solves for them. Example, scheduling tool for project management. Now, let's use Calendly as an example.

Calendly must have done their research to discover that some of their audiences are project managers that use Calendly to schedule meetings. That only happens from building buyer persona and identifying the problem that that audience faces. Same thing with UX research software for designers. Anyone who is creating this tool, example Aurelius, EnjoyHQ, Dovetail, must have built buyer personas to determine that designers are one of their core audience, UX researchers are one of their core audience, copywriters are one of their core audience.

Then they can build personalized landing pages that target the specific solution that these people are coming for, because every audience type is going to have something else that they are looking for in a product. And these are six ways that you can use these content formats to make more money for your brand.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Apple is Taking Their Maps More Seriously and Local Businesses Should, Too

For the past 20 years, local business owners and their marketers have had to live and work with Google as the “great house”, owning all the good real estate. The dominant role Google’s local and organic results play in bringing nearby customers to our doors has had the effect of making every other source of business listings feel like a bit of a granny unit — tiny and somewhere at the back of the weedy yard. Owners frequently ask whether they should even bother paying for local listings development, what with Google Business Profiles looming so large on the landscape.

But with spring comes change, and Apple has just tidied up the garden and put out a welcome mat via their new Apple Business Connect interface that’s designed to make it easier for small businesses to get listed on Apple Maps. If your last real look at Apple Maps was a decade ago when the platform was going through a very awkward stage, take note of what Near Media co-founder David Mihm is saying about the launch of ABC:

“I can't remember a press release in the marketing tech world that undersold the level of improvement more than the one that Apple put out this week. I read it, I thought, 'Ah, this is, you know, re-skinning the existing thing and putting a couple of bells and whistles in.' Then I logged in and it was like, 'WOW! Wildly different experience, much more functionality.' …I'm not saying it has gone beyond where Google's My Business Dashboard was even three or four years ago — but the juxtaposition of, 'Hey, this is a real product for managing location information' versus the absolute dumpster fire of the NMX new GBP experience.”

Multi-location management via ABC remains forbiddingly time-consuming. The steps involved in creating and claiming many listings are many. Yet, as Mihm rightly points out, this is a big step for Apple and a signal to anyone involved in marketing local businesses to take a closer look at why they need to be listed someplace other than Google!

Why get listed on Apple Maps?

Apple’s high card is its integration into daily life. Some estimate that Apple Maps has a user base of 75-100 million US adults. Car Play (which uses Apple Maps) is integrated into more than 80% of automobiles sold in the US. I think the best way to look at prevalence is that it’s estimated that there will be 136.8 million US iPhone users this year, and Apple Maps is the default mapping application on these trendsetting devices.

In the past, subpar data and a non-intuitive interface gave Apple Maps a wormy reputation, but they have spent the last ten years carefully and thoughtfully improving this product. They’ve rolled out a new “Explore” layer for navigating notable features of cities and neighborhoods, added new curated guides to places, have a function called App Clips for transactions like ordering food or paying for parking, as well as a growing set of filters for helping users refine their searches. Unlike Google, which tends to beta launch buggy products early and often, Apple has taken a more measured approach to getting things right, and in 2023, ABC stands on the shoulders of a product that is already deeply embedded in society.

In short, there are many reasons why your customers may consider Apple Maps their preferred application for navigating their local communities. Google may still be your big landlord, but Apple is offering new reasons for real-world brands to hang up a shingle in their neighborhood. When major entities like Apple put money and people behind a product, opportunity often results for SMBs.

How to get listed on Apple Maps

Moz Local customers don’t actually need to do anything. Your local business data is already being distributed to Apple Maps (you’re ahead of the game - a nice feeling!) If you’re not yet a Moz Local customer, my recommendation is that you read this piece by Mike Blumenthal to determine how much of an investment you want to make in manually listing each of your locations in Apple Maps. If your evaluation points to this being a good investment, you’ll need to take the following steps:

1. Create your Apple ID here.

2. Next, head to the ABC interface.

3. If the business you’re marketing has fewer than 25 locations, search to see if your Place Cards already exist. If they do, go through the verification wizard to claim each listing. If not, go through the wizard to create and then verify your listing. You will need to provide proofs to Apple, such as a utility bill, legal business registration certificate, or lease documentation. Verification can take about five days.

4. If your business has 25+ locations, you will need to acquire a D-U-N-S number, click on the “register as an enterprise” link in ABC, and then use the Enterprise Onboarding Guide to get going with your multi-location Place Cards.

If you determine that the hassle of creating and claiming your Apple Place Cards directly is just too much, this is a good time to note that Moz Local is directly integrated with Apple Business Connect, meaning that:

• Moz Local customers enjoy real-time data updates to Apple Maps via API

• Apple Maps data is checked and synced to Moz Local data, 24/7

• You are strongly encouraged to add up to 100 photos to your Moz Local dashboard to make your Apple Maps listings stand out

In sum, ABC has succeeded to a certain degree in making it easier for local brands to get listed, but if the process is still too time-consuming for you, a service like Moz Local can make having an Apple Maps presence practically effortless. We are very impressed with the time and care Apple is putting into their increasingly-prevalent product, and we’re keeping a close eye on new experimental features. Moz strongly believes that Apple Maps has a real role to play in the local search ecosystem.

AI for SEO and Content Marketing: A Friend, Not a Foe (for Now, at Least)

Artificial Intelligence is nothing new. It has been running behind the scenes of many marketing tools for several years now.

But the key here is that it was running behind the scenes. We didn’t see it in action, and if it was making some of our tools smarter, we were not really paying much attention.

Later last year everything suddenly changed, with the launch of ChatGPT, which is able to complete all kinds of writing tasks instantly, including full articles and even code.

Now anyone can login and talk to the tool for hours, challenging it with all sorts of prompts and marveling at its ability to understand any task and complete it promptly. There came an endless flurry of articles sharing screenshots of amazing stuff the tool was capable of.

And while it is fun to play with, the rise of ChatGPT was a phenomenon that raised quite a few scary questions:

• Is it threatening any human professions? And how fast?

• Is it going to kill human content and overwhelm the web with AI-generated articles?

• Will people soon stop using search engines to find answers to their questions?

• Where is it all going?

While I am very bad at making bold predictions and therefore am reluctant to give definitive answers to any of those questions, I am highly confident that:

• AI technology will change the way we are doing just about everything (and this is not limited to the SEO industry or any other marketing-related discipline).

• It will change the way people go about looking for (and finding) answers. But it won’t kill human-created content — if COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s that no technology will ever be able to replace human interactions. We strive for personal touches, personal styles, personal experiences, etc.

• It is not leaving, and we are at the very birth of this new AI-driven world. There’s no going back. And to be honest, I think we are the luckiest generation to have witnessed both the birth of the Internet and the birth of AI.

With that all in mind, we basically have two choices now:

• Ignore AI for as long as we can (I am sure there are still people who reject the Internet, and they are probably happy).

• Start using AI now, and ride this wave as informed as we can. With every change, there’s an opportunity, and the only way to grasp it is to be in the midst of that change.

Now, there are endless ways to use AI for all kinds of tasks, but I am a marketer and an SEO, so this article will list the ways you can benefit from it for blogging, social media, and SEO tasks.

19+ ways you can use AI for content creation & optimization

Going back to one of the most popular questions people are asking: Will AI-driven content replace human-written content?

I know there are lots of deniers out there saying that AI will never replace humans for writing content. The truth is, it is already happening to some extent. AI can write better essays than college students. It’s better content than the average content that is being published online.

Why wouldn’t Google want that, even if it is detectable? If it’s well-written and provides useful answers, Google will likely rank it, regardless of how it is created.

Google has been trying to become an answer engine for years, and AI technology is likely what will finally help them succeed. AI can already write, summarize and find answers better than most bloggers and faster than any of us.

And yet, good content is much more than good writing and correct answers. Good content does one or more of the following:

• It expresses a personal opinion. People seek critique, feedback, and sarcasm when reading anything.

• It reflects expertise on the topic that is based on in-depth education and years of experience.

AI technology can only repurpose other people’s content. It cannot do anything of the above. So if your content strategy was mostly about repurposing, it will sadly be impacted by AI, in a negative way.

And yet AI can turn quite useful for content creation tasks, including:

1. Content summaries and meta descriptions

2. Article intros and conclusions

3. Article takeaways and outline

4. Product descriptions strictly based on existing specifications (avoid any fluff content)

5. FAQ sections and pages (based on your existing articles or a keyword you are planning to target)

6. Press releases to distribute

7. Podcast or video scripts

8. YouTube video descriptions (or YouTube video summaries to use on your site for accessibility)

9. Ideas (blind spots) to include in your existing articles (“What is my article missing?”)

10. Missing steps or angles in your content or research

11. More sources to cite as further reading, etc.

12. Your About page and/or bio to use on social media profiles (prompt ChatGPT to be creative/funny/etc.)

13. Keywords you are missing (and/or ask it to organize your existing keywords by search intent)

14. Subheadings to break your content into more sections and subsections to improve readability

15. On-page “jump to” links (Ask the tool to provide HTML code for those or even generate an on-page table of contents)

16. Title suggestions to make it easier for you to create one

17. Image anchor text for your whole article/page

18. Not strictly SEO related, but you can ask it to create unique tweets, Facebook updates, and Instagram captions to promote your content

19. Definitions for any term you mention (to optimize for featured snippets).

To get the best possible definition from ChatGPT, by the way, it’s a good idea to specify your target audience or its level of familiarity with the topic at hand, in the query. For example, you can prompt it to explain SEO to someone who hears this term for the first time:

And yes, you can give it images to describe. This is useful for both SEO and accessibility:

All of these ideas will improve your content creation productivity and quality. You can also use tools and extensions to find even more ways to use ChatGPT for SEO and content.

ChatGPT is not the only AI-driven tool that can be used for content creation. There are more tools that are worth checking out.

Narrato uses AI technology to help teams collaborate on creating content. With Narrato, you can use AI to generate content topics, create SEO briefs, assign tasks to writers, and have your content optimized and proofread.

Text Optimizer combines AI technology with semantic analysis, allowing you to create intent-optimized summaries for your articles:

AI technology and creativity

Linkbait and viral marketing are integral parts of any SEO strategy because they drive link equity and brand awareness (both are probably the most powerful ranking signals).

There’s one problem with both: You are limited to your imagination. Yes, you can ask for input from your team and customers, and you can copy your competitors. But all of those methods require quite some time and effort.

AI can make linkbait brainstorming a breeze. It can also considerably cut costs on creating linkable assets.

Start by using ChatGPT for linkable asset ideation. A few ideas of prompts:

• Come up with viral quiz ideas on …

• If a site is selling …, which infographics should it create to generate links from bloggers and journalists

• Generate linkable content ideas for a site that sells …

• If you were a blogger writing on…, what would you eagerly link to?

• What are some viral content ideas for … topic?

Make sure to experiment with your prompts. Not all AI ideas will be useful or usable, but you are bound to find quite a few that will get you inspired:

The golden rule of using AI is: The result is only as good as your prompt. You can get great output if you come up with a great prompt. So don’t stop iterating!

In this sense, AI requires creativity and hard work for it to operate to its best potential. AI-powered SEO is, therefore, still dependent on human effort and input, just like traditional SEO: It is not just about bigger budgets. In fact, in SEO creativity and expertise can easily win over huge budgets, and AI is not going to change that.

Likewise, you can ask it to create email copy for your journalist/blogger outreach.

ChatGPT can be incredibly creative. If you don’t believe me, check out this woman who asked the tool to write a letter to her child explaining that Santa wasn’t real. The result is unbelievably touching, and it is actually hard to believe it was generated by a machine:

Again, ChatGPT is hardly the only AI tool you can use. There are many others that can help you to generate visual assets for your content promotion strategies.

Photoleap offers a great AI image generation tool that will leave you speechless. Challenge the tool with the most ridiculous image description, and watch create an image for you within seconds:

Photoleap has AI integrated into its phone app, allowing you to create professional images without investing much money or effort.

Wave.video is another tool that uses AI to make multimedia content easier. Simply provide your URL and it will generate a video in minutes. The result is pretty basic, but you can use it to generate video summaries and social media videos. If you upgrade, you gain access to a more advanced editor to create even better videos. But those will take more time.

For more ideas on how AI can help with creating unique images and videos, check out how Roger explores the world of generative AI imagery.

Thinking like a machine

Finally, as SEOs and content marketers, we need to get a better understanding of how AI mind works. There’s a lot of reading on that, but as a believer in tools, I suggest playing this game.

It lets you guess a daily word by associations: Start with any word and it will rate it based on how well it is associated with the word. You’ll find that the human brain works differently: Finding synonyms won’t work here… Here’s how I went from “earn” (my initial word) to “calculator”:

It is actually a lot of fun and helps you better understand the technology.

There’s also a great blog tracking AI development, new projects, and opportunities.

Conclusion

AI can do much more for your digital marketing strategy than I was able to list in this article. It can drive your customer support strategy (with technology like chatbots and IVR), it can help with brand identity creation (name, logo, etc.), it can scale your PPC strategy (helping you save time and money), and it can enhance your marketing monitoring tactics. And these are just some options that are easy and fun. I am not even going into advanced analysis, analytics, and targeting opportunities here.

Yes, things will change and they will change quickly, especially as search engines start actively integrating conversation features to quickly answer users’ queries (often without attributing any sources). But it’s not like we are going to be able to prevent those changes from happening by ignoring AI technology or denying its impact on everything we are doing.

From the not-so-long history of SEO, we know that SEO thrives when new technology emerges. We tend to find opportunities every time the industry seems to be doomed, and we will continue doing that.

Identifying and Filling Your SEO Skill Gaps — Whiteboard Friday

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Helen shows you how to find and address gaps in your SEO skills so you can continue evolving and developing your best SEO self.

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Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Helen, Head of SEO at Car & Classic, and I am here today to share some top tips on how to identify your SEO skills gaps and how to fill them. 

Now that sounds a bit rude, doesn't it, suggesting you have skills gaps? I don't know you. You might be an excellent SEO, and we're sure you are. But you know that thing that we tell our clients and our bosses that SEO is really difficult and it's always changing, and the algorithms, oh, no, they've developed again. Turns out that stuff that we tell our bosses and our clients to keep our jobs, it's actually true, and because of that, we have to keep our skill set evolving and developing to keep up with all the stuff that's changing in our industry and to make sure that we are our SEO best selves.

But SEO is kind of a broad subject, isn't it? I mean, we often loosely classify it into on-page SEO, digital PR, and technical SEO. But can you be an expert at all three, given that they've got such a wide and varied skill set? Is that not a bit reductionist anyway because what about local SEO or enterprise SEO or edge SEO?

Take technical SEO. Where do technical SEO skills end and developer skills, engineering skills begin? I'm going to take a step back from that heavy pile of confusion that I've just landed you with and talk about types of skills, namely hard skills and soft skills. Now, I'm loosely classifying hard skills as those kind of SEO skills you need specifically for SEO jobs, things like being able to do keyword analysis or a technical audit, those kind of things that you can learn, you tend to learn on the job, and you can develop and grow at over time.

Then there's also soft skills, but those are the kind of skills that are a bit more transferable, the kind of skills that would put you in a good stead no matter what kind of job you get, things like communication skills or stakeholder management. Those are really important to keep in mind because you're going to need a mix of hard skills and soft skills in different ways depending on which SEO job you're in.

So let's take a think then. Given that SEO is such a broad subject, how do you know which skills you need to be good at? For example, if you're a really good technical SEO, do you need to know lots about local SEO? Do you need to be really good at enterprise SEO? Do you actually need to know what edge SEO is, or can you just keep pretending?

1. What skills do I need? 

So step one really is identifying what skills you need for your role and your future career. So I would always start at looking at your current job. So what is it that you do on the day-to-day? I'd have a look over the course of a week, perhaps, and at the end of each day, just jot down the kinds of activities that you are doing.

So, for instance, you might have done a bit of a technical audit, or you might have had some meetings. Of course, you've had meetings. We all spend our lives in meetings. But jot them down and start to break them down into the skill sets that you need to be good at each of those activities. So let's take meetings, for example. You might have had a client pitch meeting. What are the kind of skills that you need to be really, really successful at client pitch meetings?

If you could max out, if you could turn your skill level up to 10, what would those skills be for you to be really successful in a pitch meeting? But then perhaps in the afternoon, you did some training for the developers in your team. That's still a meeting. There's a whole different set of skills. There's training. There's communication. It's a different skill set needed.

So just spend some time looking over the course of the week, breaking down all of the different activities you do in your current job, and try to analyze what sort of skills you need to do really well at those activities. But that's your job now. What about your future career? What kind of skills do you need for that? So now I would start looking at some job ads. So maybe fire up LinkedIn, ignore those 20 messages trying to sell you guest post opportunities, and have a look at some of the job ads that are there.

But don't look at the job ads that you could get at the moment. Look at the job ads that are a bit more aspirational. So if you're a technical SEO, look at senior technical SEO ads or head of technical SEO. Start looking at those job ads for jobs that are a couple of stages above where you are right now and look at the kind of skills that they are asking for, the ones that they think are absolutely essential and those that they think are a bit desirable, because that will give you an indication as to what skills you might need in your future career if you're going in the direction that you hope to go in.

And then, of course, you need to start breaking down some of those complex skills. I'm talking the kind of generic, nebulous kind of skills that we always seem to list on our job ads, things like stakeholder management. What does that actually mean in SEO? I mean, really, it means that you get your way, right, that that amazing SEO strategy that you've spent ages coming up with is bought in by the stakeholders that need to say yes to it.

That's kind of what stakeholder management is. But if you break it down into its component skills, it's about being able to communicate effectively and persuasively. It's about understanding business needs and blockers. It's about being able to understand development cycles and how your requests might fit into those. So stakeholder management, quite a broad skill, but start identifying what the component skills are of those complex ones.

And then finally, speak to your manager. Get them to give you a progression plan, set some goals for you. Help them to identify what skills you need for your current role, what they're expecting you to excel at, and that will help you to come up with a total list of all the skills that you might need in your current and future roles. Great.

2. What do I need to improve?

So you know what you need to know, but how do you know whether you're already really good at those skills or you need to improve at them? Well, I would suggest you start off by asking your colleagues. Ask them to tell you what you need to improve at. But you're going to need to be specific because if you just ask them what they think of your current skills, they'll say something like, "You're really nice and you bake great cakes for the office, and you're really friendly," and it's really edifying, but it's not particularly helpful in this context.

So perhaps put together a bit of a survey for them because everyone loves impromptu surveys when they're really busy at work. But ask them anonymously to feedback on the skills that you know you need to have for your role and ask them to mark you out of, say, 5 or 10 on how competent they think you are. Also do it yourself. This is your skills matrix. This is how you identify where you think you are in your competencies at these particular skills.

But I'd suggest you break it down further. So if you're looking at, say, website migrations, rank yourself in terms of your theoretical knowledge of website migrations, but also your practical experience of them, because it might be that you have read every single blog on the Moz blog about website migrations, but you've never actually carried one out. So your theoretical knowledge might be really high.

You might have a great understanding of what goes into a website migration, but practically you don't really have much experience of it. So you might give yourself a five for knowledge and a zero for practical experience. Get your colleagues to do that, do it yourself, and then you've got a really good idea of where you currently are in terms of your skill set. Also, ask your manager during your performance reviews to start ranking you themselves.

They might be a bit more objective. They might be able to give you an idea of the sorts of skills that they do think you need to develop in, that you've perhaps not identified yourself. They should really be able to help you measure that against the performance plans that they've put in place for you. And finally, go to conferences, read blogs, scroll through Twitter. Where do you feel out of your depth in those kind of conversations? Where is it that you think, "I have no idea what they're talking about. They're going on about edge SEO again."

3. How do I improve?

Where is it that you think you actually need to improve your knowledge and understanding and perhaps practical application? Okay, so you know what you need to know. You know what you're not so hot at. But how do you improve? Well, that's step three, and I would suggest you start by surrounding yourself with thought leaders. So go to Twitter, or Mastodon, or wherever else it is that you cool kids hang out these days and find yourself some thought leaders to follow.

Now, these might not be people in the SEO industry, but they might be experts in other fields. But try to find people who really excel at the kind of skills that you want to develop. So if you want to get better at persuasive communication, follow some politicians. If you want to get better at understanding how development cycles work and how you can get buy-in from engineers, follow some engineering managers.

But start to understand from the people who really excel at those kind of skills that you're looking to improve how they do things and how they develop and practice their skills. You can also find yourself a mentor. Now, this is great because you could have someone who really understands who you are and your direction of travel in your career. They can help you to identify where you're currently a little bit weak and also help you to see where you're improving.

Now, mentors can be quite expensive, or they can be entirely free. There are mentoring schemes out there, like the wonderful Women in Tech SEO one, and there's others that you might be able to take advantage of. But find yourself someone, and it might be a former colleague or a former boss, or it might be someone that you currently work with. But find someone who you know is a step or two ahead of you in terms of their career and the sorts of skills that you want to develop and ask them to help you.

Training, we've all been promised these amazing training budgets when we've sat in job interviews. Let's actually use them. So find yourself some training courses that are really specific to the skills that you're looking to develop. Don't just go on sort of generic SEO ones. But if it's stakeholder management, find a course that covers that, or if it's public speaking, find a course that covers that. Get feedback from your mentor, from your colleagues, from your boss.

Ask people to let you know whether they think you're developing those skills or not. Have a look at your skills matrix. Make sure that you're just not leaving it on your desktop to gather metaphorical dust, but actually brush it off and have a review. How have you developed over time against those skills that you listed out a while ago? If there's any skills that you're really, really hoping to get better at, you've got to try them out.

So whether that's a public speaking skill that you want to develop, and you've just got to make that leap to asking whether you can lead a client meeting or whether you can lead a training session or even applying to talk on stage, you've got to try it out. And, of course, it doesn't end there. It's a continual process. You've got to go back to stage one. I would suggest that you maybe set yourself a reminder once a year to have a look back over this, make sure you're still on track for the career that you want and you're still improving those skills that you want to improve.

Thanks very much.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Google Bard vs. the New Bing

This week I’ve been fortunate enough to get access to both Google Bard and the New Bing, so a day later, I’m here to share my first impressions.

What is the new Bing?

“The new Bing” is the product of Microsoft’s unholy alliance with OpenAI, makers of the now infamous ChatGPT. This development promises to have seismic effects on the search ecosystem, with Microsoft’s CEO saying they’re happy to accept “demonetization” of search in their pursuit of market share, and Google extremely concerned about the threat ChatGPT technology poses as an alternative to their core search business.

Of course, by now we’ve all also seen various viral posts and tweets showing just how dangerous it can be to use chat AI as a search engine, but that’s a topic for another day. For now, the point is that Bing is making moves.

When I perform a search on “old bing” now, I can see this box inviting me to try the new one. You’ll notice a key detail here: it’s only available in Microsoft Edge. Yikes. Big Microsoft Energy. Fortunately for you, the reader, I have dusted off everyone’s fourth-favorite browser so you don’t have to.

Performing the same search in the new Bing, I can see identical organic results, but rather different features:

The “mustelid masters” box above the organic results is new, and contains AI-generated text with a voice-to-speech capability. It’s a six-part story, with sometimes surprising accompanying imagery:

You can see here that a picture of wrestling has been sourced to accompany the text about badgers wrestling. These AI-generated boxes don’t appear for most queries — only clear and uncontroversial informational intents.

The phrase “Mustelid masters” itself seems to be original to this box.

Lastly, one of the tabs in the story cites the Wisconsin Badgers, and a page which is entirely unrelated to the content at hand, so perhaps Bing is also citing its sources for disambiguation here?

You’ll notice the addition of an “Open Website” button next to the top result on the SERP — perhaps a way of compensating a little for loss of organic click through rate?

The “chat” tab is also present on old Bing, but just shows you a message telling you to go to Microsoft Edge.

The phrase “conversational search” here is interesting, given this was a phrase Google introduced in 2013.

If we do use Microsoft Edge, we see a chatbot interface in this tab, but with some nice additions. Switching over to this from a regular search result pre-loads my previous query from organic search:

There’s a bunch of different modes available at the top, and also citations in the search results — both welcome improvements over the likes of ChatGPT.

Now, how about Bard?

What is Google Bard?

Well, not very self-confident, for one. But that’s probably a good thing.

Bard is also, right now, not anywhere near as integrated with search. In their announcement on February 6th, Google teased Bard in a way that made it look very much like a SERP feature, similar to Bing:

However, the version we have to play with now is more of a dedicated chatbot interface.

It was probably already the case that Google was pushed to move far sooner than they hoped with this technology, and of course they have much more to lose from messing with organic search than Bing does. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the slower and more cautious approach.

Now, it probably should be noted that chatbots are not really designed for me to just enter a one word keyword like “badgers”, like I might do in organic search. But, like Bing’s chat tab, I get something resembling an informational result. So, let’s compare side by side.

Bard vs. new Bing, side-by-side

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

The most obvious difference, at least to an SEO’s eye, is the presence of citations in the Bing result. Not knowing where source information comes from is one of the biggest challenges for users when dealing with this kind of technology, so that’s a huge differentiator.

Bard does claim to include citations. My colleague Mike was able to trigger them, and captured it in this clip. It’s definitely far, far less ubiquitous than on Bing.

That said, I like that the framing of Google’s solution — with multiple draft answers presented and “enter a prompt here” — which makes it clearer I’m dealing with something that is not a source of unassailable truth.

I was also intrigued by the localization of Bing’s result. It mentions the UK in its response, which is where I’m searching from, and shows UK websites in the citations. So I asked them both a follow-up question about my location:

Bing repeats itself, but Bard just seems to assume I’m in the US. Unfortunate.

Slightly commercial query

Many SEOs will be more interested in how technology like this might fit into their marketing funnel. Let’s try a classic top-of-funnel query:

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

There isn’t really an objective answer here, but both results are broadly sensible. That said, the Bing answer is both a narrower list and far richer.

Interestingly, neither result seems deterministic.

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

Bing can produce different answers to the same question in different windows, and so can Google.

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

This may be a contentious point when SEOs start optimizing for these answers, and want to measure their results. Of course, regular organic rankings can vary massively between locales and even days of the week, but generally speaking, if you search twice from the same computer (in private browsing windows etc) you’ll get the same results. Not so here.

Conspiracy theories

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison. 

Neither solution fell for some obvious conspiracy theory bait, which is encouraging to see. I actually don’t mind at all Google’s more cautious “I can’t assist with that” here. I wasn’t able to provoke a similar reaction out of Bing for any query, but I also wasn’t able to provoke it to say anything abhorrent - I’m sure others will, though.

What next for SEOs?

For both platforms there are major questions before SEOs can really engage and consider them an important part of their work.

For Bing, will this have adoption? Most SEOs have not made the habit of optimizing for Bing in recent years, but there is already talk of increased Bing market share.

For Bard, how, if at all, will this be integrated in search? The current platform is clearly marked as an experiment, and is more like ChatGPT than it is like the mock ups Google showed us in February. Or will users be encouraged to use it as its own thing?

For both platforms, there are big questions about how SEOs might go about optimizing to get their clients mentioned, and indeed favorably mentioned in results - there are lots of nefarious possibilities here, and Wikipedia is probably the most obvious. Once mentioned, how does one measure this? When I clicked through to my own site from Bing’s chat tab, it just appeared like any other Bing organic traffic. Rank tracking is an interesting problem too, and you can be sure that Moz and STAT will be posting in future about how we’re handling these features — watch this space!

13 Local Search Developments You Need to Know About from Q1 2023

Can you believe we’ve already sped through the first quarter of the new year? So much has happened, and on the strength of the warm reception this nascent local search quarterly review received in 2022, I’m going to continue the series this year. Thank you for being a reader. Let’s dive right into the most interesting new things we’ve seen in the first three months of 2023!

A new local search ranking factor!

Joy Hawkins and her Sterling Sky squad discovered something truly new this February: selecting pre-defined Google Business Profiles services from the list that Google offers some categories of business can have a tremendous positive impact on local pack rankings. Joy’s dream team is working to see whether custom-written services have a similar effect. For now, if Google shows you a choice of ready-made services (not to be confused with service areas) in your NMX interface and they relate to your business, definitely add them! By my count this brings us up to 5 GBP factors we strongly believe directly impact rank: title, URL, categories, reviews, and now, pre-defined services.

The ABCs of…ABC

In crunchy spherical fruit news, Apple launched Apple Business Connect to make it easier for local businesses to get on the map, because, of course, you want to reach those 137k iPhone users. Mike Blumenthal has the best write-up on the new ABC features, and Moz Local customers get a collective pat on the back because their info is already being distributed to Apple Maps hassle-free. I hope to have a column coming out soon on Apple’s launch, but in the meantime, local SEOs are seeing this as one more signal (amid all the AI chat buzz) that there could be a few cracks of competitive opportunity in the Google local monolith. It can be worth major money to win even a point away from Google’s market share, and this is an interesting time in search.

BBB as trusted source in troubleshooting

In other acronymic headlines, Stefan Somborac and Ben Fisher spotted Google requesting a link to your BBB listing in one of their assistive help forms. You may encounter this when reporting problems with your listings and need to go find yourself on the Better Business Bureau site. The Better Business Bureau has not always earned good press in local search circles, but this move from Google signals that they clearly trust the longstanding organization. Might be a good time to look at how you’re rated there.

GBP products in Google Shopping results

At first, there was uncertainty as to whether this was a new feature when Colan Nielsen spotted it, but on the strength of the “wows” from the local SEO community, Barry Schwartz did a write-up on this phenomenon of products that were manually added to Google Business Profiles showing up within the search engine’s large shopping interface. In the past, I had only seen products added via the Merchant Center appear this way. Communication of local inventory remains a major hurdle for independent businesses, and this change from Google is a good incentive to be sure you’re adding products to your Google Business Profiles with help, if you need it, from my handy tutorial.

Shelfies spotted in NYC

This March, when I wrote about the nifty idea of shelfies (photos of store shelves you upload to GBP to display the breadth of your inventory), I had yet to see Google altering 3-pack visuals to feature them based on my search language. Kudos to Mike Blumenthal for capturing a live instance of this behavior for “backpacks nyc” and note that the local pack images show many products instead of a single item. I’m still not seeing this in my west coast environs, but am even more convinced now that local businesses should be taking shelfies.

NMX Profile Strength leaves us feeling a bit weak

Darren Shaw’s tweet captures the real-time letdown of finding a novel New Merchant Experience feature…only to discover it seems like a sales tool for Google Ads. Apparently, in order to get a good Profile Strength score, you need to pay. Colan Nielsen perfectly summarizes the awkwardness that is happening for agencies as a result of this debut:

Google’s rollout of the NMX was not popular, and I don’t know how it is affecting local business owner engagement with the local product, but if this metric is meant to inspire more commitment from users to completing their free profiles, it’s odd to mix it up with a paid product. A red herring, a primrose path, a bait-and-switch, gammon and spinach? Hardly a brilliant success if agencies are telling their clients to ignore this “feature”. And speaking of things that were once free…

Local Service Ads: A whole lot going on

Matt Casady wrote an excellent article over at LocalU about dentists becoming eligible to “pay to play” via LSA. If you’re marketing a new practice or helping one compete in a dense market, you can purchase the visibility you need to fill the patient roster. This sounds like good news, at a glance, but it’s also part of the ongoing saga of local business visibility becoming less “free” at Google’s house. At last count, 70 categories have become eligible for LSA and Google just keeps adding to the list.

LSA isn’t just a budgetary woe for underfunded SMBs, but a hotbed of very concerning spam. As my friends at NearMedia point out in the foregoing article, LSA’s review requirements are a temptation to engage in review spam, and both fake businesses and fake review content are ending up getting recommended by Google in this program. If you’re thinking of paying Google for leads, please read Ben Fisher’s alarming piece on LSA arbitrage and spam, complete with real-world examples of some very deceptive ads. At this point, I don’t trust Google’s “guarantee” any more than I do the local packs…I’ve just seen too much fraud to pretend that such content is uniformly trustworthy. Not to say that Google isn’t making some efforts, including:

Emergency brakes during spam attacks

Another doff of the cap to Colan Nielsen for sharing a new Google doc explaining why and how they may suspend user generated content (UGC) including reviews, images, and videos during upticks in prohibited behavior. For example, if a business becomes major controversial news and begins to receive a large number of reviews from non-customers, Google can pull the emergency brake for a period of time to defend the brand (and the quality of the index).

This capability is not new, but the documentation of the practice is noteworthy. The problem is, it’s no guarantee that Google will protect you from a spam attack. Remember that review spam may not always consist of a bunch of obviously negative reviews. There’s the erosion tactic of leaving a lot of 4-star reviews to downgrade the 5-star rating of a business, and another trick I only recently encountered of spammers initially leaving a high-star review and then sneakily changing it to a low-star one. All good reasons to continuously monitor your reviews, using software if you find this task too time-consuming. And be prepared to act quickly with this step-by-step Mike Blumenthal tutorial if your business is sabotaged

Two scoops of juicy justifications

Damian Rollison brings us some better news about UGC this quarter, in the form of double local business justifications (some of which stem from reviews) appearing on listings. Justifications are textual snippets embellishing local business listings, like the, “My whole family uses them for car repairs,” shown above.

In my 2021 column, Local Justifications are a Big Deal and You Can Influence Them, I documented the different types of justifications I saw, including reviews, websites, posts, services, menus, in-stock, and sold here. At that time, however, all justifications I encountered in my study were single. Damian’s find is exciting because of the large amount of screen space being given to a double justification, with its dual conversion pitches. Have you written a Google post lately (actually, they are confusingly called “updates” now, so have you updated your GBP with an update, lately?). Double justifications would be well worth the effort, if you’re lucky enough to get them.

Immersive views for big buildings

When I was a child, my family had a coffee table book called Above London which showcased aerial photography of the capitol. Now, everyone and their cousin can buy a drone to get these kinds of shots, but lovers of new things will appreciate this tweet from Punit of the 360 Map View that Google then talked about as “immersive view” at their memorable Paris announcement. Looking up the Getty Museum in LA on Google Maps showed me that many big buildings in the area have this treatment. If your local business is contained within a landmark edifice, you could get this eagle’s eye view of where you work.

In non-Google news

Yelp has really struggled of late to compete with Google for local mindshare, but the fellows at Near Media drew my attention to a new report from the National Bureau of Economic research finding that restaurants which get listed on Yelp see a 5% increase in sales. In fact, even if your first reviews aren’t great, you still get a bump in diners. The restaurant business is HARD and that 5% could mean a great deal.

Actually, success is always the great challenge for nearly any local business, and that brings me to my last tidbit: the new, must-read report from the Institute of Local Self Reliance on the impact of dollar stores in the US. I have read countless articles over the past few years from towns and cities where dollar stores replaced all local variety and residents are stuck with little fresh food, dismal wages, and a loss of community identity. In 2022, nearly half of the businesses that opened in the US were some type of dollar store - an unprecedented figure, and these exemplars of the race to the bottom are the exact opposite of what independent businesses are working so hard to build.

I said this was non-Google news, but I’ve come to see Google Business Profiles as some of the best armor an SMB owner can don in the fight against lowered standards of living across the country. Use your profiles, and your website, and your social media to get the word out that your business is unique, local, ethical, green, family-owned, and a key contributor to the economic localism that makes the difference between a good place to live and a difficult place to be. Keep going, and I’ll be rooting for you in Q2!