MozCon 2023: The Initial Agenda

The big event is just about four months out and we're excited to give you a preview of what you can expect to hear on stage this August!

From fresh faces joining us for the first time to fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is 🔥. Topics range from AI & future-proofing your strategies, technical SEO, content marketing,, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too).

Once again, you’ve got two incredible ways to join us for Mozcon, a fully immersive in-person experience in Seattle, or through our livestream only passes which will be broadcast live from the Seattle stage. Can’t join us in person or for the livestream? We’ve got you covered with an option to pre-purchase access to the post-event video recording bundle so you can catch the sessions when your schedule permits.

Grab your MozCon ticket today and get ready for the Future of Search!

Register for MozCon

The Emcees

We have three incredibly entertaining MozCon Emcees this year to guide you through each day and keep the show rolling along:

Cheryl Draper
Senior Growth Marketing Manager | Moz

Melissa Rae Brown
Learning Team Manager | Moz

Ola King
User Researcher | Moz

The Speakers + Agenda

Feast your eyes on the lineup of talks being presented this year:

Amanda Jordan

Director of Digital Strategy | RicketyRoo

Build Better backlinks for Local Brands

As with everything in local SEO, backlinks are just a little different. What do local pack rankers typically have in common? To answer that question, we’ve collected backlink data across several home services businesses across the USA and categorized them. We’ll share our findings, and how you can build better backlinks for local clients! By the end of this session, you'll be able to list the different types of backlinks local businesses typically have, identify which link types correlate with stronger rankings, and most importantly, how to apply this to your clients!

Andi Jarvis

Strategy Director | Eximo Marketing

Back to the Future: What Lessons From Marketing History Can Tell Us About the Future

"Marketing has changed more in the last decade than at any time in history.” There’s a blog published that features a version of this line roughly every 0.5 seconds* - but does anyone stop to consider if it’s accurate? Andi will demonstrate how marketing and audiences aren't really changing, and that the future of marketing is much the same as the past. Why is this important? Because people, not robots, sit at the heart of marketing. By the end of this talk, you'll understand how you get your customers back to the center of what you do, and how that will turbocharge your marketing efforts. Strap yourself into the MozCon time machine for a journey Back to the Future.

*Stats entirely made up… much like the results used in most content marketing efforts.

Brie E. Anderson

Owner | BEAST Analytics

From Fear to Forward Motion: Navigating the Future of Analytics with Confidence

What the heck even is GA4 and why are you being forced to use it? Get ready to explore the rapidly changing landscape of analytics! In this talk, we will explore the future of analytics and provide a step-by-step guide to adjusting to the big changes that lie ahead. We will discuss how to move from fear and resistance to embracing the transformation that is already taking place. You will leave with a blueprint for success that will help you future-proof your analytics strategy and unlock new possibilities for growth and innovation.

Carrie Rose

Founder | Rise at Seven

Dominating TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and Amazon SERPS As Consumer Behavior Changes

As search volumes rapidly change and users use new platforms such as TikTok for search, how should SEOs respond? Carrie will share her process of dominating all SERPS - not just Google! Discover how SEO fits within the user journey, and the role content can play for both offsite and onsite content, generating links and search demand. You'll learn how advertising and SEO overlap, and what we can learn from award-winning advertising as part of search strategies..

Chris Long

VP of Marketing | Go Fish Digital

Why SEOs Need To Start Playing Offense Instead of Defense

In an industry overloaded with data, tools, algorithm changes, and a constantly evolving landscape, it's tough to know what to prioritize. Often, this leads SEO initiatives and strategies to be more reactive instead of proactive. In this session, Chris will show you how to shift to an offensive SEO mindset. This will help you better prioritize key initiatives, get stakeholder buy-in, and navigate a successful long-term SEO strategy. You'll leave this session understanding how to identify new markets to break into, leverage SEO data around key recommendations, utilize keyword segmentation to better inform your SEO strategy, and build a framework for setting up SEO experiments.

Crystal Carter

Head of SEO Communications | Wix

Views on Views of Video SEO

Fifty-four percent of consumers report that they'd like to see more videos from brands, and video SERPs account for an average of 20% of untapped keyword opportunities. There's never been a better time to improve your video SEO! From on-page embeds, to SERP visibility, and even in your backlink profile, video is an unrivaled tool for adding value to your content and improving your website's SEO outcomes. In this talk, Crystal explores what matters on the Google SERP, and what leads to success when optimizing the videos on your site.

Daniel Waisberg

Search Advocate | Google

Search Data at Scale

Are you using Search data effectively and at scale? In this presentation, Google Search Advocate Daniel Waisberg will present the data available today, and demonstrate the best methods of using Search Console bulk exports for scaling your SEO efforts. After this talk, you'll understand the challenges of using data to steer your strategy, and get the scoop on analyzing and visualizing this data to drive your product decisions!

Duane Brown

SEO Manager | Dialpad

Hiring The Perfect Agency: How To Avoid Getting Burned

A 2022 Upwork study shows that 39% of the U.S. workforce freelances. Just think about how many more ad agencies exist today, as compared to 2019. You’d think that hiring would be easier with all of these options, but nothing could be further from the truth. Hiring is a valuable skill, and we are going to give you the skills to hire that next agency. By the end of this session, you'll be able to identify agencies that are the best fit for your brand, effectively interview prospects, avoid pricing ambiguity and pitfalls, partake in productive onboarding, and look for meaningful results and metrics. Let's get you the skills to hire better next time!

Jackie Chu

SEO Lead, Intelligence | Uber

SEO Co-Conspirators: Navigating Complex Systems

SEOs have self-reported that the #1 challenge to their SEO program being successful is getting changes implemented. Additionally, we're often faced with constantly having to prove the value of SEO as a channel. In this talk, Jackie will focus on how you can source and uncover allies, enlist your coworkers, and successfully navigate the political landscape to get your project prioritized.

Jason Dodge

Founder & CEO | Black Truck Media + Marketing

Rethink Your Industry Pages - They’re Not What You Think

B2B marketers, and SEOs alike, are all too quick to create industry-specific landing pages for every single vertical we serve. In reality, these pages have very little relevance to what your customers are actually searching for, or what it is that you actually do in that space - limiting the reach and missing out on potential customers who would benefit from your solutions. Are you ready to reimagine your entire industry vertical proposition? Jason will explain the ins and outs of industry pages, their role in content marketing, and - more importantly - how optimizing content around the pain points and direct needs of your customers is more relevant now in B2B marketing than ever before.

Jes Scholz

Group CMO | Ringier

Mind the Gap: Bridging Generational Differences in SEO

To keep up with the ever-evolving needs of users, Google is transforming from being a search engine to an ecosystem of experiences that often reach people before they need to search. Discover, Google Lens, YouTube Shorts, and Bard are just a few examples of this shift towards richer, more engaging surfaces. By the end of this talk, you'll be able to leverage these new visibility platforms to improve organic performance and future-proof your brand.

Lidia Infante

Senior SEO Manager | Sanity

Headless SEO: I’m Sorry, But This Is Happening

Headless CMSes are on the rise, and headless SEO is quickly becoming an essential skill for SEOs. In this talk, Lidia will explain the concept of content modeling with RAL examples, which lies at the core of headless CMSes. By the end of this presentation, you will have a firm grasp of the limitations and advantages of headless SEO, and possess a checklist of 7 implementations you need to request from your development team.

Lily Ray

Senior Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research | Amsive Digital

Google’s Just Not That Into You: Intent Switches During Core Updates

If your website has been negatively impacted by a Google core update, it is common to immediately assume that there is something wrong with your site. However, there are many other factors that could explain why rankings changed during a core update, and understanding these are key to improving performance. You'll walk away from this session understanding how Google core updates work, how and why the results change, how to respond to being hit by an update, and how to future-proof your site.

Miracle Inameti-Archibong

SEO Lead (Insurance) | MoneySuperMarket Group

How to Use Brand SEO to Future-Proof Your Online Visibility

With digital ad spending projected to reach $701 billion in 2023, generic CTR dropping by 12% between position 1 and 2, the increase in no-click searches (+60%), and the constant rolling out of updates, it's more important than ever to build a sustainable online brand presence to algorithm-proof your traffic. This talk will explore how SEOs can contribute to brand building, and how it can help future-proof your online visibility.

Noah Learner

Director of Innovation | Sterling Sky

Down the Mountain

Struggling to find your place in SEO? Want to break through to the next level, but feel like you’ve hit the wall? Join Noah Learner on the journey “Down the Mountain”, as he shares his evergreen framework for optimizing your career in any market. This framework - built on craft, people, critical thinking skills, and synthesizing data - will help you now and in the future, as you look for what’s next. You’ll learn a repeatable process and specific skills that will help you accelerate your career and make you impossible to ignore.

Dr. Pete Meyers

Marketing Scientist | Moz

Lower Your Shields: The Borg Are Here

From ChatGPT to Bing's Prometheus to Google's Bard, AI (specifically, Large Language Models) is disrupting search as we know it. We can fight the inevitable, or we can put these tools to work. Learn where AI chat excels, where it fails (sometimes spectacularly), and how to use these tools to not only keep your SEO job, but also level-up your SEO career.

Ross Simmonds

CEO & Founder | Foundation Marketing

The Evolution of Content & The Future of Our Industry

Is it all over? Is the world as we knew it a wrap? With the rise of AI - is it realistic to assume that the world of SEO and content will stay the same? Or should we all start dusting off our resumes to try something new? In this presentation, Ross is going to share a blend of both the realities of how AI can be incorporated into our work (maybe to give us additional runway) and answer the question as to whether or not AI is actually coming for our jobs and what we can do to ensure that we're ahead of the curve when it comes to using these tools, embracing the technology and finding edges amidst rapid change.

Tom Anthony

CTO | Search Pilot

Entities Are the Past: Search Is Going Multidimensional

For years, "keywords" were everything in search, and then came the rise of 'the entity'. Tom believes that the time of the entity will soon be over, and will explain how Deep Learning 'latent spaces' are highlighting that entities were 1-dimensional thinking. The future of search is going to be about context, and it isn't far off. You'll walk away from this session with a new technique that will replace keyword research so that you can prepare, and ideally, get ahead of the competition.

Tom Capper

Senior Search Scientist | Moz

The SERP is Dead, Long Live The SERP

SEOs have complained for many years now, that the SERP just isn't what it used to be. We yearn for the simpler days of 10 blue links. But Google is changing for a reason, and SEOs have reason to be invested in its survival. Besides, not all SERP features are bad news. In this talk, Tom will look at Google's direction, and the strategic imperatives that are forcing its hand. You'll walk away with a plan to unearth happiness (and organic revenue) in the brave new world.

Wil Reynolds

Founder & VP of Innovation | Seer Interactive

To Be Announced

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We hope you’re as excited as we are for August 7th and 8th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back. Early Bird pricing is on through May 31st.

How to Get Bard to Show Your Local Business: Advice from the Source

We’re all Bard beginners right now, and so there are no foolish questions. Unsurprisingly, I’ve started out with Bard by asking it local business questions. As I chatted, I learned some useful things from and about Google’s nascent AI chat that you’ll need to know if this technology becomes part of your customers’ lives. My main goal was to learn three things:

1. How much is Bard like Google search in a local use case?

2. Would I be able to get any tips for local business inclusion in Bard?

3. Do local SEOs need to change tactics to adjust for Bard?

Advisory: Bard’s own system warns you to take its statements with a grain of salt, so to speak, so do bear that in mind.

Because it was lunchtime and I was hungry, I began by asking about tacos.

When I asked Bard for the “best tacos near me”, it had no idea where I was, beyond apparently recognizing that I’m in the state of California. It showed me tacos in San Francisco (which is sort of near me) and tacos in Los Angeles (which would be quite a long drive for me, even for the best tacos). Interesting to note the plug for Doordash and UberEats. Mainly, though, pay attention to the fact that Bard is not like the local search environment Google has long accustomed us to in which it knows our geolocation without us having to modify our search term. With Bard, I realized I’d need to specify a city instead of just stating “near me”:

Getting more local with Bard

So, here we receive a list of six restaurants that are, indeed, in Novato. Bard shows me the average star rating (note the qualifier of 4+ stars) and gives me a sentiment analysis summary of customers praising taco quality, service, and prices. Next, I clicked on the “Google it” button to see if these 6 restaurants match Google local rankings. It took me to the local pack, from which I clicked through to the local finder to get the complete list of the top 6 restaurants

One of these things is not like the other

You see it immediately: the two lists don’t match.

With only 3 of the restaurants appearing on both lists and all the others being different, Bard’s recommendations are only a 50% match for Google’s local finder results. Moreover, the ranking order of the individual entities is a 0% match. Look at La Carreta at the bottom of Bard’s recommendations, but the top of Google’s local rankings, for example.

Another word to the wise: the Google organic rankings also didn’t match the order of either list. So, of course, I was curious as to why Bard is selecting its list of six. I asked:

To thine own self be true, Bard!

Local business owners and marketers, take note that Bard lists authenticity, affordability, convenience, variety, and friendly staff as the six contributors to its recommendations. This made me very curious as to how AI knows these six restaurants have all these good features, and I wasn’t prepared for Bard’s answer:

Bard says it has read their reviews (again, business owners and marketers take note) and that’s all fine and good. But when a robot claims to have “spoken to people who have eaten there”, we have a problem. So, I had to ask:

When pressed to explain, Bard did not share that Google has sent a speaking robot to the town of Novato to converse with people in Mexican restaurants. Instead, it completely reversed its position and admitted, “I can’t speak to people in the real world, but I can access and process information from the real world through Google Search and keep my response consistent with search results.”

I think it’s vital to mention here that Bard lying and backtracking could be quite problematic for local business customers who attempt to use AI chat as an alternative to local search. It doesn’t inspire trust in the content and Google will need to address this error sometimes called “hallucination” but which should more clearly be termed “disinformation”. Perhaps Bard’s failure to tell the truth inspired me to make up a “story” of my own and invent a fictitious business that I’m trying to get included in the AI list:

I found Bard’s advice to be extremely interesting and worthy of sharing because it matches, almost point for point, the tips you’ll get from a good local SEO consultant: get listed in Google’s local environment, get positive reviews, invest in community involvement, offer a unique product, provide great customer service, and don’t expect instant results. Encouraged by Bard’s initial tips for performing within its ecosystem, I decided to shake the bottle to see if any Google local ranking secret sauce would come out:

Local search ranking factors, according to Bard

Unfortunately, no revelations here. Bard suggests having a complete and accurate listing and warns of the tie between inaccurate local business info and negative reviews. It advises you to get positive reviews and respond to them, and to optimize your website. So far, so good, but there are three problems here that again lead to that creeping feeling of being led astray by Bard:

1. Outdated information - I bet you noticed Bard using the outmoded branding “Google My Business” instead of “Google Business Profile”. The re-brand happened two years ago and stale information does not inspire trust for customers who use this tech to try to find local businesses like yours.

2. Incitement to spam - It’s excellent advice to optimize your website with local keywords, but telling users to do this with their Google listings is another matter. The main place I see this activity happening is within the GBP title; owners add extraneous keywords to their names because it can boost local rankings, in violation of the Guidelines for Representing Your Business on Google. Adding keywords any place else on the listing (like the description or in Google Updates) is unlikely to have any impact on your local search rankings, so this advice is not merely suspect, but it could actually lead to people engaging in forbidden practices.

3. Misrepresentation of other brands - Bard advising business owners to encourage customers to leave reviews on Yelp is a misrepresentation of the policies of a third party. Yelp infamously forbids this activity, but Bard is encouraging it. Google has a long and frustrating history of misrepresenting the businesses in its local index, and unfortunately, Bard appears poised to do the same. As always with local search, online misinformation directly impacts real-world people.

I wrote a Twitter thread on asking AI multiple local SEO FAQs in which Bard scored a low C vs. the F I had earlier given ChatGPT. Given the ongoing disinformation we’re encountering, both in terms of Bard claiming it had spoken to restaurant diners and of it mixing in some very bad advice with the good, we’re not at a place of trust with this “answering machine” at this point.

Yet, local business owners are still going to want to know how to be recommended by Bard if it becomes deeply embedded in customers’ online lives. And that brings us back to the question: why is La Carreta number #6 with Bard but #1 with Google? Why does Bard love Tommy’s Salsa best? Let’s do a very quick side-by-side audit (not a more complete one) and see if we can find any clues, and I’ll highlight obvious wins in light blue.

A mini competitive audit of Bard vs Google’s favorite tacos

What we see here is that the at-a-glance wins on the Google local search side are coming from the extraneous keywords in the title and from the very interesting fact that this restaurant pointing their GBP to a Facebook page is then apparently deriving DA/PA benefit from the behemoth authority of that platform (a stealth local search ranking factor?). As for Bard, the wins are all on Tommy’s Salsa’s side, with a higher star rating, more reviews, more links earned, an older listing, a shorter distance to the city centroid, a higher Yelp rank and - notably - a #1 adjusted organic rank.

This is, of course, a single query, and a very new technology, but given Bard’s stated emphasis on customer service and reviews, it does check out that the chat listed Tommy’s Salsa before La Carreta, and overall, Tommy’s Google Business Profile components are making its Maps presence a bit more impressive than the competitor’s.

In conclusion – does the coming of Bard change what you should be doing as a local business marketer?

In major news right now, AI creators and promoters are claiming that ChatGPT, New Bing and Bard will change the world forever. These individuals even fall back on the utopian fiction that, because of their invention, no human being will ever have to work again. The reality check is that inventors and investors built similar hype around the Rapid Marmalade Cutter which was meant to release humanity from the endless toil of…shredding oranges. 1930s ad copy reads, “Home marmalade making is easier today than it has ever been! The Rapid Marmalade Cutter revolutionizes this money-saving, health-giving occupation!” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Inventions can make some tasks easier for some people, but unless there’s a real demand and use for them, they can end up gathering dust in garages. At the moment, I suggest thinking of AI chat as just one more online space in which local businesses should act with awareness to see how they are being represented by a third party. The fact that this technology tells lies is a good reason to see if it mentions your brand. Only recently, Google weirdly began listing products on Google Business Profiles as being free or costing $1, and you can imagine the phone calls local businesses had to field over that fiasco. So, practice awareness.

As for seeking Bardic inclusion, my first impression is that you’ll still be doing the same tasks: making your GBP as fully-filled out as possible, earning good reviews via good customer service, growing and optimizing your website on the basis of consumer research. You’ll notice that Bard’s recommendations for getting mentioned in its lists of favorites didn’t contain a single surprise or novel notion for how to create visibility for local businesses. In other words, I see nothing game-changing here, but I do see a ton of room for your own research if your business isn’t included and wants to be.

We’ll keep studying this together as things move along with the “revolution” of AI chat. In the meantime, just keep taking good care of your customers, because, contrary to headlines, we’re all still counting on the people at your business to show up for the vital work of serving our communities.

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.

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

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.

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

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!