The MozCon 2023 Final Agenda Has Touched Down!

It’s hard to believe that this year's MozCon is less than two months away, and we couldn't be more excited to dive into the future of search from our brand new venue, the Seattle Convention Center’s Summit building.

On August 7 and 8, join Roger Mozbot at MozCon for insights and tactical presentations from industry leaders, plus the opportunity to connect and network with fellow attendees!

Tickets are already 90% sold out, but there’s still a little bit of time to snag your spot before they’re gone. Night Owl pricing is on until June 30, and tickets are just $999 for Moz subscribers. Can’t make the in-person event? Grab yourself a Livestream pass + video bundle for $449 or just the Livestream pass as a standalone for $199.

Save my spot at MozCon!

We previously shared our Speaker lineup sneak peek in December, the Initial Agenda drop in April, and our Community Speaker reveal in May, but today, we’re ready to share the full and complete Final Agenda*. With our speakers putting the final polish on their presentations, here’s a look at the two action-packed days we have planned. (*exact start times subject to change)

Sunday, August 6

12:00pm–4:00pm – Optional early registration & badge pick up

Arriving in Seattle early and want to get a jump on picking up your badge? Drop by registration to check in and pick up your badge.

Monday, August 7

7:30am – Breakfast & Registration

9:00am – Opening remarks + state of the Industry

Cheryl Draper

Moz’s own Senior Growth Marketing Manager will be kicking things off early on the first day with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference and setting the stage for what’s to come over the two days of MozCon.

9:15am – Google’s Just Not That Into You: Intent Switches During Core Updates

Lily Ray

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.

9:45am – Why SEOs Need to Start Playing Offense Instead of Defense

Chris Long

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.

10:20am – A special announcement from Moz you’re not gonna want to miss!

10:25am – Morning networking break

10:40am – SEO Co-Conspirators: Navigating Complex Systems

Jackie Chu

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.

11:10am – Search Data at Scale

Daniel Waisberg

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!

11:45am – Community Speaker – Beyond the Written Word: Future-Proofing Your Content Strategy by Leveraging Multimedia Formats

Azeem Ahmad

In today's rapidly changing digital world, marketers must go beyond just written content to engage with their target audience in the right way. Consumers, including marketers themselves, now expect content that is visually appealing, easily digestible, and interactive. If you want to ensure the longevity of your content strategy and also be more adaptable to the changing landscape digitally, you'll need to leverage multimedia formats such as video, audio, and more. This talk will explore the benefits of incorporating these formats into your marketing strategy, including tips on how to create engaging content that resonates with your audience and boosts conversions/sales. By the end of this session, you'll have a clear understanding of how to future-proof your content strategy and stay ahead of the competition.

12:00pm – Birds of a Feather lunch discussion tables

1:30pm – From Fear to Forward Motion: Navigating the Future of Analytics with Confidence

Brie E. Anderson

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.

2:00pm – Down the Mountain

Noah Learner

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.

2:30pm – The SERP Is Dead, Long Live the SERP

Tom Capper

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.

3:05pm – Afternoon networking break

3:25pm – Headless SEO: I’m Sorry, But This Is Happening

Lidia Infante

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.

4:00pm – Views on Views of Video SEO

Crystal Carter

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.

4:30pm – The Evolution of Content & the Future of Our Industry

Ross Simmonds

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.

5:00pm – Day 1 – Closing address

5:15pm–7:00pm – Welcome reception happy hour brought to you by Moz + Kickbox

Join us at the Summit private rooftop garden terrace. Meet with fellow attendees and speakers over light refreshments and snacks, music, and stunning views of the city skyline. We look forward to bringing our community together to kick off MozCon 2023. See you there!

Tuesday, August 8

7:30am – Breakfast & Registration

9:00am – Back to the Future: What Lessons From Marketing History Can Tell Us About the Future

Andi Jarvis

"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.

9:30am – Lower Your Sheilds: The Bord Are Here* (* Written By ChapGPT)

Dr. Pete Meyers

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.

10:00am – How to Use Brand SEO to Future-Proof Your Online Visibility

Miracle Inameti-Archibong

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.

10:35am – Morning networking break

10:55am – Build Better Backlinks for Local Brands

Amanda Jordan

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!

11:25am – Community Speaker – Rethink Your Industry Pages - They’re Not What You Think

Jason Dodge

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.

11:40am – Hiring the Perfect Agency: How to Avoid Getting Burned

Duane Brown

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!

12:15pm – Birds of a Feather lunch discussion tables

1:45pm – Dominating TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Amazon SERPs as Consumer Behavior Changes

Carrie Rose

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.

2:15pm – Entities Are the Past: Search Is Going Multidimensional

Tom Anthony

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.

2:50pm – Mind the Gap: Bridging Generational Differences in SEO

Jes Scholz

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.

3:20pm – Afternoon networking break

3:40pm – Talk Title To Be Announced

Speaker To Be Announced

4:15pm – Talk Title To Be Announced

Wil Reynolds

5:00pm – Closing remarks: Farewell & thank You

7:00pm–10:00pm – MozCon bash at MoPOP brought to you by Moz + CopyPress

Karaoke: check! Photo booth: check! DJL check! Join us for one last hurrah as we take over MoPOP. You won't want to miss our legendary closing night bash — we'll have plenty of games, food, and fun as we mix and mingle, say "see ya soon" to friends new and old, and reminisce over our favorite lessons from the past 2 days.

See you there?

Chatting with speakers, connecting with peers and potential partners at a Birds of a Feather lunch table, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! Get your ticket now and we'll see you in August!

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 and need help making a case we have a handy template to convince your boss!

Night Owl pricing is on through Jun 30th.

Register for MozCon

How to Create Kick-Ass Local Landing Pages Whiteboard Friday

Learn all about how to create kick-ass local landing pages in this Whiteboard Friday with Amanda Jordan. Discover the most popular features and get to know the dos and don'ts when creating local landing pages.

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

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Amanda Jordan at RicketyRoo, and today I'm going to be talking about how to create kickass local landing pages. I talked about this topic at MozCon in 2022. I did some research on the top 50 pages in the U.S. and home services businesses that ranked on the first page, and then I reviewed those pages and analyzed the features that they were using on those pages to determine what makes a winning location landing page.

Most popular features of local landing pages

So the most popular features are listed here. Sixty-one percent of the home services businesses that ranked on the first page had reviews on their location landing pages. I think that's pretty much a given now, even though only 61%, there is 39% who were not doing it. But that's pretty much a given in my opinion that you should have reviews on that page, if for any other sake other than being able to use the structured data for it, for the conversion rate optimization, just providing users with a reason to trust you and believe that you're good at your job.

So like just for any other reasons, that would be the basic reasons why you want to do that. Thirty-two percent had a unique value proposition, so something to set them apart from their competitors. I think that's actually very low, and that should be something that really all businesses should be striving for is setting themselves apart. You don't want to just be another site that's saying, "Hey, you can give me money for my services."

You would want them to know why they want to choose you, and that is something that you do in your unique value proposition. Only a quarter of them included any type of sale or a coupon, which is a huge missed opportunity. So if you're seeing that your competitors aren't offering a coupon or sale, that's an opportunity for you to snag business from them. If they're shopping around and going to multiple websites, if you're the only one that is offering a coupon, they don't know that you might be, I don't know, 10% more expensive from your competitor until they call and get a quote.

So if you're offering 15% off, you may actually snag a customer and only have to give them 5% off because they don't know what your prices are compared to your competitor. So that is a good way to get more clients in and get more conversions. Then only 18% had awards or recognitions mentioned on the page. I think that's a missed opportunity as well because those are trust signals. Those show people that they can trust your business, that you're recognized in your industry, that you do good work.

So these are the features that I found on those businesses in the top 50 most populated cities in the United States. Where they ranked on the first page, these are the features they were using the most. There were some standouts where they had almost everything you could think of as far as features, and then there were others where they were getting lucky, like low competition. Their business has been around for a really long time, so they didn't have to put in that much effort to rank well because everyone knew them and they're almost like a fixture in their community.

So if you look for plumbing in that city, that's just what's going to show up.

Answer these questions when thinking about your pages

So really, when you're thinking about your location pages, you should be trying to answer these questions. I put them here because I think like a detective a lot of times when I review sites, and I like "True Crime" a lot, so I think about it as kind of putting together what am I looking for, almost like Clue.

You want to know what's going on. Who did what, where, when, why, how? So when you look at your competitors, answer these questions, and when you're thinking about your own location landing pages, answer these questions too. Who are you trying to reach out to? Who are you? What's your business? What are you trying to offer them?

What are their concerns? Why should they choose you over competitors? When are you the best choice for them? Where can they contact you, and how can they contact you? All of these questions should be answered on every location landing page. If you're not answering all these questions, then people are going to have to search around on your website to find those answers, or they're just going to leave and go to a competitor who can more easily answer those questions.

If you think about it, this is a lot of what Google tries to answer in your Google Business profile as well. So you should be matching up not necessarily word for word what's on it, but think about the features that Google is trying to show in their own tool and make sure that those features also exist on your location landing page.

To answer those questions, look at the data

So you want to answer these questions, and how you want to answer them, you want to use these types of data.

You want to use first-party data. So you know your customers. You've worked with them. You likely have a CRM that you use. You want to use that CRM to accumulate valuable data and use it on your pages. If you know that at certain times of the year certain issues exist for a certain amount of houses and you're in home services, say the summer months, you already know in the summer months AC units are going to need maintenance and repair.

Put the percentage of homes that you serve with those issues during those months on that page in that area. That's automatically adding unique content that no one else has and that Google is going to see too as unique content, that's data-driven content, that's interesting content. So not only is it something that is unique to your page and not more generic than content that people are used to seeing, but it's also something that may be interesting enough that people will share with others, that may be used for other reasons as a source for other things as well.

Third-party data. So you want to use statistics, FAQs, things that you can find around the internet that you know is true, that is relevant to your business and is relevant to that specific location so that you can be as unique as possible within your content without being duplicative at all. Then user- generated content.

Your users should be leaving you reviews. If they're not leaving you reviews, you should be asking them to leave reviews. So that's one of the things that you can do. Comment sections on websites. There are lots of clients that I've had, especially in e-commerce, where they have e-commerce and local together, where they have a comment section where people can talk about their experiences, not like in a review place, would ask questions, give feedback on some things, things like that, communicate with each other, almost like a forum sometimes too.

That's a ton of user-generated content that's right there that you didn't have to write, that's about your products and services in your business. It will show up in Google as well. So it's more usable content that you could have someone else produce for you.

Dos and don’ts of creating local landing pages

Here are my do's and don'ts of creating a location landing page. I'm going to start with the don'ts because I see these issues frequently.

Even when businesses have the best intention, when they've hired an SEO, when they've hired a marketing director, I see that they run into these issues a lot, and they're hard to overcome. Not to belittle, they are difficult. Duplicate content is a huge issue for location landing pages. Thin and generic content are huge issues. But if you look at your data sources that you could actually pull from easily with scalability, so you don't have to worry about someone having to go through and write about unclogging a toilet 200 different ways.

You can pull your data about how many house calls you've gotten about unclogging toilets seasonally, by area, by ZIP code. Use that data on that page instead. That's so much more interesting than saying like, "Hey, if you have a clogged toilet, come call us." Everyone knows that you want them to do that. You can make that page more interesting.

You could have reviews about people who called you for specific types of issues on that page as well to facilitate that uniqueness and personalization for the user. So really the duplicate content and the thin and generic content issues are solved if you use first-party, third-party, and user-generated content. They will solve those issues for you, and it doesn't have to be something extremely labor intensive.

A lot of this data can be pulled from Google Sheets into your website. Don't treat it like a blog. That is another issue I see very commonly is that a business will say, "We need a ton of content to get people to come to our location landing page. We want this page to rank really well." But they forget that it's also about bringing someone in and making them want to make a decision to work with you on that one page.

It's the landing page, so they shouldn't have to go anywhere else to determine if they want to work with you or not. By answering these questions, you give them all the information they need to decide that they want to work with you, and you want to do it in a way that's engaging and interesting. So you don't want to have a huge block of text with nothing breaking it up. You want to include any sales or coupons, awards, reviews, and unique value propositions throughout that content to break it up and give them multiple opportunities to decide that they've read enough, they've heard enough, and they're ready to work with you.

So these are my steps and recommendations for creating a kickass local landing page. If you want to discuss more, you can find me on Twitter @amandatjordan.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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 and need help making a case we have a handy template to convince your boss!

Register for MozCon

MozCon Field Guide: Exploring Summertime Seattle

MozCon 2023 is fast approaching (taking place August 7 & 8), and we here at Moz are so excited to see all the IRL and virtual attendees! As the event draws closer, we think it’s a great time to remind folks of everything you can do while visiting the Emerald City.

Nestled up in the corner of Washington state, surrounded by forests, mountains, and the Puget Sound, Seattle is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). It is home to industry giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Boeing and is the birthplace of Grunge music (think Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam — all from Seattle).

Whether you’re traveling from near or far, we’ve compiled a list of some of the amazingly fun, educational, and sometimes weird activities around the city. And if you haven’t bought your tickets yet, don’t worry! It’s not too late. Head on over to the MozCon hub to explore purchase options. Night Owl savings are available through June 30!

For the sightseers

If this is your first time visiting Seattle, or if you love more traditional “tourist” attractions, these stops should definitely be on your list.

The Space Needle

Often synonymous with Seattle, you can’t find a photo or piece of video footage of the Seattle skyline without this iconic landmark included. Originally built for the 1962 World’s Fair (the inspiration for this year’s MozCon theme), the Space Needle now operates daily for visitors to take in a 360º view of the city. It is also home to the world’s first rotating glass floor.

Photo by Jared Lung

Columbia Center Tower

The Sky View Observatory of the Columbia Center is located on the 73rd floor of the “tallest public viewing area in the Pacific Northwest.” You can take in views of everything from Mt. Rainier to Bellevue from the viewing area and then grab a snack at the café.

Pike Place Market

This market is quintessential Seattle. Located near the downtown waterfront and founded in 1907, Pike Place is a must-see stop. It features local businesses of all kinds, including the infamous flying fish of the Pike Place Fish Market (featured in the opening credits of Real World: Seattle) and the first Starbucks. And for those with more time to explore, below the stalls of the street level is a maze of brick-and-mortar stores like Golden Age Collectibles (the world’s oldest comic book shop).

Photo by Farid Briones

Kerry Park

Located in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, Kerry Park is the go-to place for majestic views of the city and Mt. Rainier. Commonly used for shots in TV and film that establish Seattle as the location, it’s a great place to catch the sunrise or sunset.

The Seattle Great Wheel

At 60 meters tall, this ferris wheel is the largest of its kind on the west coast. And if you’re scared of heights (like me!), it’s still a great site to see. Especially Friday through Saturday night when they light it up with a fun light show!

For the lovers of learning

Seattle is home to a plethora of places to help expand your knowledge! Whether you’re into art, books, or history, there is something for everyone.

SAM

The Seattle Art Museum features art from around the world with both ongoing and featured exhibits. The featured exhibit for August will be Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks, which officially opens on July 13. If you’re planning a visit to SAM, be sure to keep in mind that they are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Seattle Asian Art Museum

Located at Volunteer Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, the Seattle Asian Art Museum is another location of SAM. The upcoming Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit officially opens on July 21. This museum is open Friday through Sunday.

Northwest African American Museum

Self-described as “... an anti-racist, pro-equity, affirming gathering place of hope, help, and healing for the entire Northwest region that is building intergenerational cultural wealth,” the Northwest African American Museum is open Thursday through Sunday. Be sure to check out the Freedom of Expression exhibit on display until September 3.

Museum of Flight

Seattle has a rich aerospace history, and you can learn all about it at the Museum of Flight. This museum is larger than life, featuring exhibits about space and air travel which include real planes (and a space shuttle full fuselage trainer!).

Photo by DreamArtist

MoPop

Located below the Space Needle, the Museum of Pop Culture, aka MoPop, will be the location of this year’s MozCon Closing Party. This museum is such a fun experience! It features exhibits about music, science fiction, indie games, and the world of fantasy. These exhibits are filled with relics, props, costumes, and more from your favorite films and TV shows. It is a must-see for any pop culture fan! You can even make your own music in the Sound Lab. And guess what? You’ll get to explore some of these exhibits at the after-party!

MOHAI

The Museum of History and Industry is located on the edge of Lake Union, and features exhibits all about Seattle’s history.

University of Washington

Seattle is home to the University of Washington, which has a beautiful campus ready to explore. Check out Drumheller Fountain, the quad, and Suzzallo Library before heading over to the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture or Frye Art Museum.

Seattle Central Library

The stunning Seattle Central Library is located in the middle of downtown Seattle. The glass building was designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and features art throughout – a must-see for any book lover!

Photo by Edward Palm

For the foodies

Seattle and its surrounding areas are chock full of amazing restaurants, cafés, breweries, wineries, and more.

Food

No matter what you’re craving, there’s a restaurant for you somewhere in Seattle. If you’re looking for a place to start, check out Seattle Met’s 100 Best Restaurants list. Some personal recommendations:Rocco’s Pizza, Cactus (Southwest), and Barrio (Mexican), Mighty O Donuts (Vegan & delicious!), and Dick’s Drive-In (a Seattle staple). If you’re looking for ideas of where to eat while at the conference, be sure to ask a Mozzer!

Coffee

Although Seattle is home to Starbucks headquarters, there are tons of independent and locally owned coffee spots to check out. Some include Fuel Coffee, Caffe Ladro, Cherry Street Coffee House, and Herkimer Coffee. Looking for more suggestions? Check out Eater’s list of Essential Coffee Shops.

If you’re interested in learning about the science and history of coffee and brewing, Seattle has you covered! Check out the Coffee Chemistry event at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Capitol Hill. They also offer various tasting events if you’re looking to try something new.

Breweries

Breweries are abundant in this area. And whether you’re looking to do a tasting flight or just grab a pint, the possibilities are endless. Right downtown, you have the Pike Brewing Company, and just up on Capitol Hill you have Optimism Brewing Company. If you’re able to venture beyond downtown, you have options like Reuben’s Brews and Fremont Brewing. More into cider? Seattle Cider Company and The Woods Tasting Room has you covered.

For the outdoor adventurers

When people think of the PNW, they often think of the great outdoors. And for those who enjoy spending time outside, we sure do have a lot of opportunities to soak up the sun! There are lots of hiking and walking trails around Seattle, including the Washington Park Arboretum (which also features a Japanese garden!).

If you prefer the water, you can rent paddle boards and kayaks to explore Lake Union and Lake Washington. Or, if you’re planning on attending MozCon in a larger group, you may want to think about renting a small electric boat to tool around in.

Have a picnic overlooking the water at Gas Works Park – featured in the iconic paintball scene from the film 10 Things I Hate About You.

Photo by Fernando Reyes

If you’re looking for places to explore that offer an outdoor experience, be sure to check out the Chihuly Garden and Glass at the Seattle Center or the Olympic Sculpture Park. Or take a stroll near the Ballard Locks to see one of the busiest lock systems in the country. You can also spend some time at their botanical garden and see the fish ladder. Pro tip! Wondering how the locks work? You can learn all about it at MOHAI!

Photo by Chris F

For the sports fans

Want to catch a game in a different city? Seattle is home to plenty of professional sports teams!

Baseball

T-Mobile Park is home to the Seattle Mariners. They’ll be in town playing the San Diego Padres and the Baltimore Orioles.

Soccer

OL Reign (Seattle’s Women’s Soccer team) will be playing Portland Thorns FC the Sunday before MozCon if you’d like to catch a match. They will be playing at Lumen Field, which is where Seattle Sounders FC (men’s soccer) and the Seattle Seahawks (football) also play.

Basketball

The Seattle Storm will be home at Climate Pledge Arena to play the Atlanta Dream on August 10 in case you want to check out the four-time WNBA Champions.

Football

Preseason will have started just in time for MozCon! The Seattle Seahawks will be playing the Minnesota Vikings on August 10 if you’re looking to root your heart out.

For the pop culture aficionados

If you’re into pop culture and are looking for some interesting stops to add to your Seattle tour list, we’ve got a few ideas for you.

Jimi Hendrix Statue

Although its real name is The Electric Lady Studio Guitar, it’s fondly referred to as the Jimi Hendrix Statue, and you can check it out in the Capitol Hill neighborhood on the corner of Pine and Broadway.

Fremont Troll

This infamous statue is located under the George Washington Memorial Bridge in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. It’s been featured in films like 10 Things I Hate About You and the TV show Once Upon a Time.

Fremont Troll. (2023, May 30). In Wikipedia.

Bruce Lee’s resting place

If you’re a martial arts fan (or a fan of The Crow), you can pay tribute to Bruce Lee and his son Brandon in Volunteer Park.

Kurt Cobain’s bench

Are you a Nirvana fan? Then be sure to add Viretta Park to your list of places to visit. This park is near the home of Kurt Cobain, and although you can’t see his house, there is a bench there that has become a memorial to the musician and is covered in fan messages.

KEXP Gathering Space

KEXP is a beloved non-profit radio station here in Seattle. You can stream them anywhere in the world through their app (and I highly recommend you check them out – they have amazing themed shows each night of the week). They have a public gathering space in Seattle Center which features a café, record shop, and a window into their studio. It’s a great place to relax and have a cup of coffee.

SIFF Cinema

Movie buff? Seattle is home to one of the largest film festivals in the world – Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). Although the festival won’t be at the same time as MozCon, they offer year-round showings of movies from around the world. If you’re looking to check out a unique film that you may not get to see on the big screen elsewhere, check out the showtimes of the SIFF Cinema Uptown Theater or SIFF Cinema Egyptian Theater.

For the eccentric explorers

We can’t wrap up this list without including some of the outside-the-box activities and locales. So here are a few things to check out if you’re looking for something outside the standard fare.

Gum Wall

Although technically part of Pike Place Market, this attraction deserves its own entry on our list. The Seattle Gum Wall is exactly what it sounds like - a wall of gum. People come from all over to stick their gum to this brick wall hidden down an alley of the market. Fun (or maybe gross?) fact: the wall has only been cleaned off twice in its history – in 2015 and 2018. The cleaning occurred to help preserve the wall itself.

Fremont neighborhood

We’ve mentioned a few places in Fremont already (the Fremont Troll and Fremont Brewing Company) but if you have time to explore this neighborhood more fully, it is a fun and quirky area that doesn’t disappoint. Not only is it home to lots of fun shops and restaurants, but also a statue of Lenin, the Center of the Universe sign, a rocket, and dinosaur topiaries. Be sure to take a walk by the Waiting for the Interurban statue, too. It’s tradition to dress up the figures for different occasions and holidays.

Photo by Meghan Pahinui

Underground Seattle Tour

Back in 1889, a fire destroyed a large section of Seattle’s downtown. The citizens of the city opted to rebuild – on top of the existing city! Now there is a network of buildings and tunnels below present-day Seattle from the original city. You can take tours of Underground Seattle in Pioneer Square.

Seattle Pinball Museum

Like pinball? Feeling nostalgic? Check out the Seattle Pinball Museum — and bring some quarters!

Hat n’ Boots

Hat n’ Boots is a set of statues in Oxbow Park that include a 44-foot wide cowboy hat and a pair of 22-foot tall cowboy boots.

Photo by Meghan Pahinui

Photo by Meghan Pahinui

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re from the Seattle area or you’re coming in from out of town (or country!) we hope you discovered some fun ideas to bookend your MozCon adventure. If you haven’t purchased your tickets just yet, be sure to check out soon so you don’t miss out. And if you’re having trouble convincing your boss (or yourself) to send you to the beautiful Pacific Northwest, check out our Convince Your Boss blog post and initial agenda to learn even more about the event. Hope to see you in August!

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 and need help making a case we have a handy template to convince your boss!

Register for MozCon

How and Why You Should Create Informational Content with POVs

Informational SEO content, by itself, only drives traffic.

It’s the ideas you put inside that determine whether it’ll drive anything else besides that (say, conversions, revenue, etc.).

But unless you’re a media outlet where the goal is to get views and clicks for ads, you don’t just want traffic.

You want your content to persuade your readers to do something — whether it's to sign up for a product trial, buy your product, or contact you for a consultation.

That's where points of view (POVs) come in. We’ll go into more detail about how POVs help your informational content drive sales, but first, let’s define what they mean and see an example.

Note: informational content is simply content you create to inform your readers about something. It doesn’t necessarily contain an opinion, call to action, or a sales pitch, just helpful information about a certain topic or object.

What’s a POV? And what does it look like?

As the term implies, a POV is your unique perspective or view about a topic. It’s how you see a particular concept — and it’s often formed by your experience or observations (or both).

A good example of a POV is something Kick Point’s president Dana DiTomaso did with a recent Whiteboard Friday, titled: “GA4 Audiences: Not Just for Ads!”

Right within the introduction, Dana shared her perspective (POV) on one of the features she thinks people weren’t using as much as they should:

Other articles on the same topic might be preaching other ideas, but Dana’s POV is that Google Analytics 4’s Audiences are more capable than just using them for ads.

And throughout the article, she continued sharing her unique perspectives on every point she raised in the article and video.

I’ll share why POVs like this are super important in the next section, but what Dana did with that piece is an example of what a POV in an informational content piece looks like.

Put another way, a POV is what you think as a person or as an organization about any given topic. It represents YOU. When asked, “What are your thoughts on {insert topic}?” Your response is your POV, and it is unique to you and your brand.

But why are POVs relevant for creating informational content?

There are probably many other reasons to use POVs in informational SEO content, but these five stand out:

Reason 1: Form deeper connections with search visitors

By providing your point of view on a topic, you're offering your audience a glimpse into your thoughts, values, and viewpoints. You're sharing a piece of yourself.

You’ll often need to dig into your personal experiences, thoughts, or even the experiences of other people and share your opinion on the topic.

As your audience consumes your “POV-driven” content, they’ll feel as if they’re getting to know you. And that, right there, is the connection you want to create — because people often prefer buying from people they know.

A good example of content forming a connection with the reader is the Moz piece I shared earlier by Dana. Another one is an article by ConvertKit on “How (and why) to build your first email marketing funnel.”

It immediately starts with the writer (Kayla Hollatz) sharing her experience about when she first heard the term “email funnel.”

This intro immediately shows the writer’s POV or viewpoint: email funnel is easy; doesn’t require an MBA to understand or use.

It eases the reader’s mind into the piece and encourages them to keep reading. And the more they do that, the better your chances of them taking the action you want them to take.

Reason 2: Become the go-to for “serial searchers”

Ever met people who have a strong habit of googling for answers to every question they have? (Hint: I’m one of them)

I call them (well, us) “serial searchers.” Once a question pops into our heads, it doesn’t take us too long to plug it into a search engine for answers.

And as we do that, we’d find that there are certain brands or publishers in specific industries/niches that often deliver the answers that:

• aren’t fluff,

• have been written by subject matter experts, and

• actually solve our problem.

Over time, we recognize these brands as “thought leaders,” and they’re often going to keep getting our clicks when we see them in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

But I wanted to see if this is just me or if other search engine users have similar habits of recognizing certain brands as “go-to” sources for answers.

So I asked my LinkedIn connections if they typically click results from certain brands more than others. The result:

Apparently, 80% of search engine users in my network tend to recognize certain trusted brands as the go-to source for information or answers.

The bottom line here is, you want to be that website — or better yet, THAT AUTHOR — for your audience. And sharing unique and helpful POVs in your SEO content is one effective way to do that. And this is even more important now that Google rewards Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) in its search algorithm.

Reason 3: Hold attention for longer

If you share POVs that are helpful and unique, you’ll get readers excited about your content and make them more likely to stay on your page longer.

One time, I wrote an article featuring a couple of B2B marketers.

I asked them how long it typically took them to determine whether they'll read an entire content piece. Here are some of their responses:

In essence, they’re saying: It takes only a few seconds to decide whether a content piece, likely to consume 10 minutes of our time, is worth our attention.

If your POV is strong enough, chances are high they’ll wait. They’ll read your headline and then your intro. So if your POV resonates with them, they’ll keep reading.

Reason 4: Drive more conversions

Think about this for a second: Imagine you’re selling CRM software. A potential customer who doesn’t even know they need a CRM tool goes to Google and searches for “how to manage customer relationships.”

Your content is on the first page, so they click it. Once they’re in, the first line reads, “Customer relationship management isn’t about customer relationships. It’s about driving more revenue and conversions.”

Right there and there, you’ve introduced a POV that’ll likely pique their interest. Now, they’re in a “tell me more” kind of mode.

And if you play your cards right (more on this in a bit) and convince them that a good customer relationship management tool will grow their revenue, they can get inclined to sign up for your product.

Reason 5: Become a socially relevant brand

SEO content (informational or not) is usually not designed to be shared on social media or other platforms. Marketers who create this type of content are often only looking to get organic traffic from search engines.

And that often results in creating content that’s not engaging enough to make people want to click and share with friends in the industry (or content that doesn’t help your brand be socially relevant).

But if you’re creating content with specific POVs, you are likely to build a social brand — aka a brand people want to talk about and share on social media. An exemplary demonstration of this is the approach revenue intelligence platform Gong uses with their blog content.

They’re almost always creating informational content that’s both search engine friendly and engaging enough for social platforms. For instance, their blog post on Value Selling is crushing it in the SERPs as well as on social media.

When they shared the content on LinkedIn, it garnered over 180 likes, seven comments, and 10 reposts (which is huge on LinkedIn).

Meanwhile, it’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPS) for 25 keywords, meaning it’s organically driving search traffic:

This is happening because they’re not just cranking out SEO content; they’re creating search-friendly content with POVs that help them build a brand that’s socially relevant.

Bottom line: creating informational SEO content doesn't mean you can't also create content with a point of view and personality — in fact, it's often better to do so.

How to create POV-driven informational content

Here are some of my best tips for creating POV-driven content:

1) Find relevant product-related topics

There are lots of topics swirling around in your industry, but you don’t need all of them.

Instead, you want to pick the ones that are most closely related to your product; those are the ones that’ll attract your target customers.

Once you find them, you’ll need to narrow down your POVs on each of them.

But before that, here’s how to find your topics in the first place:

Plug in your main product-related topic or keyword into Moz Keyword Explorer and it’ll give you a list of related topics.

For instance, if you’re a B2B software company selling CRM software for real estate businesses, a major topic for your business would be “real estate CRM.”

Plug that into the tool and it’ll return a list of keywords and topics you can use in your content.

Your primary job here is to be brutally honest with yourself about which of these related topics would:

1. be the most interesting for your audience,

2. give you an opportunity to share your POVs, and

3. present opportunities to drive sales for your business.

For instance, as a CRM software brand for real estate vendors, you’ll need to ignore keywords like “real estate agents near me,” and focus on topics related to CRM software like “CRM for real estate agents.”

Resist the temptation to select any topic just because it has a high search volume or a low level of competition. Put your focus on topics that’ll interest your audience and bring value (leads, revenue, etc.) to your business.

Next, narrow down your POVs on each topic you pick.

2) Identify your POVs on selected topics/keywords

Once you have your topics and keywords selected, identify your distinct point of view on each one.

Nothing too complex here, just your true position on each topic that you can defend.

And you can make this POV-identification process easy by simply asking, “What do I, or we as a business, think about {topic}?”

For example, what does a brand like Drift think about AI marketing — or the role of AI in marketing? Here’s what their POV looks like:

It’s simple and to the point.

Having a POV doesn’t always mean having big, grandeur ideas to share. Sometimes it’s simple and represents what you truly think about a topic — based on your experience and observations.

That’s the crux of having a POV.

It should represent you and your brand. It shouldn’t be something you just hand off to interns or inexperienced content creators to figure out.

It should be something that gets shaped by your expertise, experience, and values. That’s what your audience will connect with. They’ll connect with you and your ideas.

3) Introduce unbiased, contrasting approaches

First, what are “contrasting approaches?”

It’s simply the practice of introducing different POVs or methods to a problem.

Done well, contrasting approaches help to showcase one important element: your credibility. It tells the reader, “I’m placing all the cards on the table. Make your choice.” And they love it; 72% of customers — from a Gartner survey — said they prefer completing their purchase without the help of sellers.

They want to decide on their own without being told what to do. And introducing contrasting approaches, and genuinely highlighting the pros and cons of each, helps them do that.

Drip comes to mind here. They created a series of articles on Drip vs. other email marketing platforms, and they’re decently unbiased. This is what Drip vs. MailChimp looks like, for instance:

Buyers often appreciate seeing different sides to an issue like this without feeling as though you’re trying to manipulate them, so Drip’s execution was on-point here.

With contrasting approaches like this, you get to demonstrate your knowledge and authority on the topic, while also inviting your readers to think critically and compare their own opinions with yours.

Important note: It’s important to truthfully provide both sides of an argument — not just the one that supports your POV. But of course, ‌it’s okay to be a bit biased here and say you prefer your product over others — but genuinely explain why.

4) Back your POVs with recent data & case studies

It’s not enough to just state your opinions and perspectives on a topic. You need to support them with credible and relevant evidence that shows why your POVs are valid and valuable.

One of the best ways to do that is to use recent data and/or case studies that reinforce your points and make them believable.

For example, if you’re writing about how to optimize your website for SEO, you can use data from Google Analytics or Moz to show how your strategies have improved your traffic and rankings.

When you back points or claims with data like this, you eliminate objections and make your content more believable. And the more people believe your POVs, the more likely they are to trust you and the strategies, products, or services you offer.

5) Infuse your POVs into all parts of your content

All parts of your content here means: the headline, introduction, body, and conclusion.

Make sure to weave POVs all throughout your content — from start to finish.

And this simply means instead of just stating facts and figures, share your thoughts and experience for every point you raise.

Remember my point earlier about how sharing POVs means sharing a part of yourself with your audience — i.e. your own thoughts and views?

When you infuse POVs, you’re doing just that, and it’s an effective way to build a strong connection with your audience.

POVs aren’t just opinions

They’re informed opinions based on data, research, experience, or insights.

They show that you know what you're talking about and that you have something valuable to offer. They also help you stand out from the crowd and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

For example, if you're writing a blog post about the best SEO tools for beginners, you could share your POV on why Moz is better than its competitors — from your real-life experience.

By sharing your POV, you're not just providing information. You're providing value. You're showing your readers that you understand their problems and you have a solution for them.

Sharing POVs inside informational SEO content can help to drive conversions because it builds trust and rapport with your audience. It also shows that you're confident and authoritative in your niche. And it makes your content more interesting and memorable.

So next time you write SEO content, don't be afraid to share your POV. It could make a big difference in your results.

How TikTok Is Reading Your Mind Whiteboard Friday

Explore the role of demographics, engagement, and personalized recommendations in how TikTok surfaces content. Discover how TikTok attempts to avoid echo chambers and gain valuable insights into its inner workings. Dive into the fascinating world of TikTok's algorithm in this new Whiteboard Friday episode with Lidia Infante!

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

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to a new edition of Whiteboard Fridays. Have you ever felt like TikTok is reading your mind? It's just an algorithm. My name is Lidia Infante. I'm the Senior SEO Manager at Sanity, and I'm going to talk to you about how TikTok offers you the videos that you like.

What do you like?

The very first thing they're trying to do is to show you videos that interest you. They're trying to keep you in the app as long as possible. So they need to figure out what you like. How are they going to do it? The moment that you sign up, you provide some demographics data. Your age, your gender, where you're signing up from all gives TikTok enough information to start assuming what your interests are going to be and populate your For You page.

Out of that first For You page, the topics that you engage with or don't engage with are going to give TikTok the information about what you might enjoy seeing on your For You page. After that, they're going to try to find related topics to the ones that you have expressed an interest in. For example, I really like cross-stitching.

It's not difficult to assume that I also like interior design or flower arrangements, which I do. TikTok shows them to me, and I stay on the app much longer than I should. Another point of information is your followed profiles and the topics that they talk about or that they are interested about. Your Discover tab behavior is a very strong signal for TikTok too.

What that means is when you search for a hashtag, click on a hashtag, make a TikTok search, search for a user or a trend or a TikTok sound, that's all giving strong information to TikTok about what you like because making a search or diving deeper into the content of a sound is much more complicated behavior than simply just scrolling past on your For You page.

What is the video about?

Now that they know what you like, they know that they can serve you videos about it. But first they need to understand what the videos that they have in the database of content are about. To do that, they're going to use the visuals. So literally TikTok can "see" with the visual AI the content of your video. What are the objects that are in there?

Are there faces? What are the emotions of the faces? Is there a dog? Is there a chair? They're going to be able to see and process all of that. Another strong signal is going to be the text overlay that you put on your TikTok video, if you have any notes or any content put on there or if you're manually inputting the captions. The audio on your video is very relevant for TikTok to understand what the video is about, and by audio I don't mean TikTok sounds.

We're going to come back to that. I mean the actual voice, the words that you're saying or the ambient noise that sets the location of your video. The captions and hashtags that you use in the video are very relevant and help TikTok understand what it's about as well. When you are done with creating your video and you start typing it out, when you create the cover for your video using the TikTok tools, that gives TikTok that level of information.

Then we've got the TikTok sound. If you're using a TikTok sound that's related to a trend or to a topic, it also gives TikTok the information about what your content is, what the emotional tone of your content is, and so forth. All of these elements, as a hardcore SEO, are what we would treat as on-page SEO but on the TikTok side of things.

Is the video any good?

Now they know what you like, they know what their database of videos are about, but they also know that they have a limited amount of time for your attention. So they're going to want to show you only the best of the best of their content. They're going to have to understand if the videos they've got are any good. How are they going to do that?

They're going to be using, amongst other metrics, engagement. So the engagement of users that have expressed similar interest to yours are going to help TikTok predict your potential engagement and how much you're going to like the video. They're also going be favoring native content creation. So any video that's being created directly from TikTok using the TikTok tools is going to get a little bit of a boost.

The language that the content is in is very relevant too. When signing up for TikTok and creating your profile, you state what are the languages that you speak and what is your preferred language. TikTok can also understand this based on your behavior. Then the device that you're using and the strength of your connection also help TikTok serve you lighter videos and shorter videos when you're maybe on a train or don't have as good connection to actually have a good viewing session.

What isn't eligible "For You" page content?

There is some stuff that TikTok does not want to see on their For You page. Any content created by a user that has stated that their date of birth is under 16 is not going to be eligible for the For You page. So if you're trying to be cute and giving your brand account a date of birth of when it was founded, don't because nobody is going to see it.

They're also quite strict with QR codes. They don't want to see any QR codes in there because of safety reasons. You don't know if that QR code is going to take your users to a spam website or a dangerous website showing porn or violent content. But also they don't want to miss out on the affiliate marketing payout that they get when you shop directly on the TikTok Shop.

Any dangerous or violent behavior is also not accepted or eligible for the For You page. So unless it's tagged as done by specialists, don't try this at home and so forth, it's not going to show up. Engagement bait content is also not eligible for the For You page. So content that tries to trick users into engaging with it without them actually naturally wanting to engage with it is going to be demoted from the page.

That type of content is like when on Instagram we used to see posts that said tap twice to see some magic, and the only magic is that you had liked the post and increased the engagement of the brand. That is the type of engagement bait that's not acceptable on TikTok. Another thing that they don't accept on their For You page is any content that shows tobacco products.

Is TikTok capable of breaking bubbles

TikTok wants to show you videos that interest you and keep you in their platform, but they're also trying to not generate an echo chamber for you. Echo chambers are a very real risk of any recommendation algorithm that's based on interest and engagement, and we have seen a rise in radicalization across different populations because of this.

The way that TikTok is trying to address this problem is by offering random content of random interests, random creators that you've never seen before on your For You page. Initially, they said they were doing this about 10% of the time, but there aren't any current numbers about this activity. This is not enough to remove echo chambers because of the psychological effects of familiarity and their exposure effect.

Once you see something that does not quite fit right with your For You page, you're very quick to scroll. It is a similar phenomenon to banner blindness when we are going around the website. We kind of know what an ad looks like, and we don't even look in that direction. It's a similar effect.

So it is not enough, but one must appreciate that they're trying. If you have found this interesting, you can catch up with me and my content on Twitter @LidiaInfanteM, on LinkedIn looking for Lidia Infante, or on my website lidia-infante.com. Thank you for watching.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Build an SEO Report in Seconds with Domain Overview

How to generate a snapshot SEO report in seconds with Domain Overview

Time. Resources. No matter the day, month, year, or algorithm update, these are 2 commodities of which SEOs will never have enough! We are perpetually searching for ways to systemize, automate, and simplify so that we can spend more time with the fun stuff - brainstorming and strategizing.

One of the most time-consuming SEO tasks is gathering all of your key metrics into one place. There are countless data points to consider when evaluating a site’s current SEO performance, from top keyword rankings to Domain Authority and link metrics.

Many SEOs will create custom SEO reports that are dedicated to tracking keyword rankings, technical SEO, and link signals over time. Creating a Campaign in Moz Pro is a great way to accomplish this! However, a Campaign is meant for the long game - you’ll conduct research, gather data, and discover actionable insights that shape your SEO strategy.

But if you’re looking to create a one-page report - within seconds! - that evaluates the SEO performance of a client website, a potential agency prospect, or a competitor without investing a significant amount of time and effort, Domain Overview is the answer.

What is Domain Overview?

Domain Overview allows you to enter any website domain and immediately understand the current state of a brand’s SEO standings. With this tool, you’ll be able to see key data points from tools within Moz Pro - all in one view - divided into 4 sections: Summary, Rankings, Competition, and Links.

During the beta phase, 91% of users found Domain Overview valuable, stating that it improved workflow efficiency, provided valuable insights of the most important metrics, and supported auditing websites for potential clients.

How can you use SEO snapshot reports?

A snapshot comes in handy in a variety of situations! Let’s say, for example, I was in the market for a new home. A photo of the house, along with the square footage, bedrooms/bathrooms, address, and price would help me understand whether or not it’s worth my time to schedule an appointment with a real estate agent.

Similarly, Domain Overview will help you gain an understanding of a site’s basic yet holistic SEO performance, revealing whether or not a website is worth further time and research. You’ll quickly discover which keywords they rank for, what their Domain Authority and Page Authority scores are, domains the site has acquired backlinks from, and more.

Below are some potential use cases for the SEO snapshots that Domain Overview can provide:

Client prospecting

As an agency or SEO consultant, when you’re gearing up to pitch a new client, it’s important to prepare yourself with a baseline of their website’s data. Create a one-pager that you can share during a pitch or kickoff meeting and save time and impress your potential client!

Looking for more data than what a snapshot offers? The Domain Overview report provides links to the appropriate areas of Moz Pro where you can view the full and detailed data. For example, you can view all of the keywords that a site is ranking for in Keyword Explorer. This will give you a jump start on gathering data to uncover keyword and competitive SEO opportunities for your new client.

Competitor research

Competitor research is an effective method for generating content ideas, discovering link gaps, and ideally, stealing traffic from your competitors! With Moz Pro, you can create a Campaign for your domain or clients that you’ve onboarded, and track up to 3 competitors’ SEO efforts over time. Campaigns produce insights that allow you to spot trends and opportunities from collected data.

However, let’s back up just a bit (cue semi-trailer truck beeping). Before you dive into creating a Campaign, you may want to get a snapshot of a competitor’s current standings. How are they performing? What’s their DA? What do their keyword rankings look like? Are they worth tracking? Domain Overview answers all of these questions in seconds.

Or perhaps you find yourself in a situation where you need to demonstrate a competitor’s current standings to a client. This report will give your client a clear picture of what they’re up against, and empower you to make decisions on your strategy moving forward.

A quick SEO report for your domain

Domain Overview is like a launchpad. It organizes a preview of metrics from different areas of Moz Pro into a single view, which can be helpful to run for your own domain as well as competitor sites.

It can be a helpful way to find quick opportunities. Even while writing this post and punching our domain into the tool, I found a new 404 error that needed to be addressed with a redirect in the Links section of the tool.

Start creating snapshot SEO reports

We created Domain Overview to gather all of the key metrics that can be helpful to SEOs and website owners into one place, and to create a launchpad into the various set of tools within Moz Pro. I know that I have already gotten value out of the ability to analyze domains so quickly. After a report is generated, I browse the data at a 30,000-foot-view and begin my investigations into SEO opportunities.

In my opinion, Domain Overview effectively mirrors the early phase of the SEO process: allowing you to assess data at a high level, and dig in deeper where you suspect there could be opportunity.

6 Local SEO Tasks for Summer Success

I hope this summer features at least a few lazy days for you, kicking back in the shade with loved ones and a pitcher of iced tea or a tray of homemade popsicles. But the next few months can also be a really exciting time to try out new local SEO and marketing tasks well ahead of the holiday season to see what’s resonating with your community in 2023. Here are 6 smart things to try that could sweeten your local business’ summer success.

1. Get on the Search Labs waiting list

No one likes standing in line, but there’s one queue you should get in this summer and that’s for Google Search Labs so that you can get the earliest possible access to the new Search Generative Experience (SGE), shown above in Joy Hawkins’ tweet linking to this early bird article. SGE is one of Google’s experiments at incorporating AI into their search results, and while the good news is that early testers are seeing local pack-like results for local SGE searches, the rankings of these “new packs” don’t match up point-for-point with traditional packs or organic results and that’s news your business needs to know. As Noah Learner reports:

And as I reported back in April regarding Google’s AI chat Bard rollout, there is definitely some overlap between AI results and older layouts, but there are also some differences. Getting access to SGE so that you can work on puzzling out what causes those differences and understand how to earn top visibility in the new formats will be smart work for any local business.

Whether all of these AI experiments will fundamentally change your business operations or marketing practices remains to be seen. We’re all waiting to find out which products will actually move forward and how many customers will actually integrate them into their daily lives as they have with local packs, Google Maps, Apple Maps and other familiar features. While you’re in line, I recommend reading Greg Sterling’s piece, Google SGE: Meet the New Pack. 

2. Study the weather and serve the people

If any part of your business or inventory ties to seasonality, you’re quickly learning that you can’t count on the weather anymore. In 2021, millions of people in Oregon and Washington were desperately hunting for air conditioners when their summer temperatures became 30-40 degrees above normal. Air conditioners just weren’t a “thing” in the Pacific Northwest before, but they are now.

Where I live in Northern California, the extreme drought had gone on for so long, memories of wet winters were fading into myth. Then we got inundated with such rain this past winter that people were scrambling for umbrellas, for wood chips to fill their flooded driveways so that cars wouldn’t sink, for sandbags and French drains. No one is sure what is going to happen when our massive snowpack melts here this year...

The thing about Climate Change is that it causes erratic weather, and we’re just not able to make statements any more like “England is a wet, cool country” or “New York gets heavy winter snowfall”, or “California is dry” and base our inventory on these “facts”. Many local businesses will need to re-think seasonality and activate a more fluid supply chain and inventory structure to accommodate for weather and conditions locals aren’t prepared for or accustomed to.

They may need to extend floorspace time for seasonal products, or at least warehouse them, to be brought out at time of need so that they can be the ones selling the air conditioners to Portland and Seattle and the galoshes to people in San Francisco. Even restaurant menus need to incorporate awareness, because diners may not want to eat cold salads in a wet, foggy summer, or hot chowder when the temperature at the coast is 116 degrees.

Ready your business to respond speedily to sudden changes, using social media and your website to let locals know that you - at least - are prepared to serve them in novel conditions. And don’t overlook how upset people are feeling about these changes. Use your voice to advocate for the transition to green energy in your community and in your nation so that the detriments of Climate Change are actually being addressed instead of simply reacted to on a town-by-town basis.

3. Put on your pro-active shorts

You’ve noticed that video is everywhere in the SERPs, right? When I looked at MozCast this morning, I saw that at least 23% of the searches we track are returning video results. In fact, at this moment in time, it appears that Google is returning videos more often than local packs in this snapshot of our data set:

This prevalence is playing a part in why many local SEOs are now recommending that local businesses include some form of video along with every new page they publish. I’d recommend taking that strategy one step further: create two videos for every new page or piece you publish. Why? Take a look at this YouTube result for the multi-location brand Patagonia:

As you can see, the top video is one that’s been published by the actual company, but the new-ish Shorts section tells a different story. The brand has complete control over the messaging in their own videos, but what narrative is being built by the Shorts (videos of 60 seconds-or-less) lineup? Random customers (or non-customers) appear to be questioning the company’s prices, creating an atmosphere of controversy by hinting at revealing unknown information, and claiming that the business hates zippers. Is any of this accurate, relevant? Who knows. It doesn’t come from the brand. Meanwhile, two of the results have nothing to do with the business and are, instead, featuring Argentina.

If all of this is beginning to sound familiar, it’s because local businesses and their marketers have encountered this phenomenon before, in the form of Google Business Profile Q&A. When you leave it entirely up to the public to tell your brand story, you may end up with this:

What’s happening here is that a platform exists on which a business can create content, but that platform is being ignored by the business. Customers think the business should have content there to help them out, but where neglect is present, leads are being lost to unhelpful, random information from the public that is not designed to convert. This is one of the best examples I know of user generated content (UGC) gone wrong.

I’m a firm believer in the concept that the customers of customer-centric businesses tell the best brand stories. In fact, as we saw in Moz’s review survey, only 11% of people trust what brands say about themselves more than what customers say about them. I’m a huge fan of UGC and its powers of persuasion, but I also believe that brands should take control wherever they can.

So, this summer, as you’re uploading new product and service pages, refreshing your about page, updating your mission statement, or creating any new content around what your business is and does in your community, experiment with creating both:

• A long-form video of whatever length that summarizes the content of the page and is uploaded to your YouTube channel

• A video short that highlights the most important/sharable aspect of the content and is uploaded to the shorts section of your YouTube channel

These shorts can also become the basis of a TikTok feed for your business, if you want to go that way, or can be ideal for sharing on your other existing social channels. And don’t forget that you can upload videos to the image section of your Google Business Profiles! Note that there is debated about the actual length of these. Google’s guidelines say 30 seconds, but videos of over a minute have been spotted. Read this Twitter thread for more conversation on this topic:

4. Speaking of Google Business Profiles…

Here are three tasks to enrich your profiles over the summer that will hopefully increase customer actions surrounding your listing:

1. Add three new seasonal photos each month this summer. Many local SEOs believe dripping information to Google is a smart strategy for proving freshness. Even if your business doesn’t experience major seasonal changes, use your creativity to showcase your business in the summer sunshine.

2. Write one new Google Update (formerly known as Google Posts) per week in June, July, and August. Sterling Sky found that Offer-type updates get the most clicks, so focus on your summer specials and discounts, create interest by mentioning that these are time-limited offers, and don’t forget to include a strong call-to-action of what you most want the customer to do after reading your Update.

3. Check your hours! Many businesses have longer hours in summer, but even if yours don’t change, check your GBP (and other listings) for accuracy. Summer brings visitors to nearly every town. These folks don’t already know when you’re open or closed as locals might. You can keep everyone a happy camper by double-checking that your store hours are listed correctly so that no one is inconvenienced. This will also protect your brand from avoidable negative reviews. If you discover troubling inconsistencies in your hours across the local search ecosystem, consider signing up for Moz Local so that we can quickly distribute accurate information for your business to all the major local business listing platforms around the web.

5. Speaking of visitors to your town…

Motor associations and travel agents say that road trips will remain the top vacation choice for Americans this summer. Some day, I’d like to do a survey of how many reviews people write per each vacation they take. I know I’ve always personally enjoyed reliving my trips after returning home and taking a few minutes to leave reviews for local businesses that helped me out. But until I can poll the public on that, what I can tell you is that TripAdvisor found that travelers are 77% more likely to book a space in your RV park or a cabin at your lodge if you respond to the reviews you’ve already received. 77%!

I can also tell you that 96% of the summer visitors to your town will be reading local business reviews because that’s the percentage of the public that reads reviews in general. And they won’t just be looking at what wanderers like me say about your business. More than 90% will be moderately or extremely influenced by how your business is responding to reviews.

If you know you’ve got a backlog of neglected reviews gathering dust in your most visible local business listings, pretend you’re in summer school (sorry, not fun!) and have the homework of writing a response to every review you’ve received in the past year. Tackle a batch every week until you’re caught up. Owner responses publish almost instantly, so you could immediately start benefiting from seasonal visitors seeing you responding to complaints and being there to solve problems. And if you keep up the good work as the year progresses, you’ll have the added benefit of being 100% responsive before the busy holiday season at year’s end. 

6. Communication is everything…and texting is easy!

If you’re on the fence about whether this is the year your local business should invest in texting with customers, consider these stats compiled by my friend Aaron Weiche of LeadFerno:

• 78% of customers want to text with your business

• Texting is super fast - 90% of people open texts within three minutes of receiving them

• 65% of your potential customers will have more positive feelings about your business if you offer text messaging as a mode of communications

There is so much information you could be communicating to customers this summer about your product availability, seasonal amenities, safety protocols, and satisfaction guarantees. You’ll find thousands of articles on the web about relationship-building being the core of good marketing, and the mass adoption of cell phones puts the easiest possible mode of communication right in all of our pockets or hands. In fact, 88% of survey respondents say texting is the main reason they use cell phones, and multiple surveys indicate that it’s become customers’ preferred means of conversing with businesses. This summer would be a great time to make life easier for your customers and your business by opening your text lines for fast and effective communication.

Making local business sun tea

Most of the tasks we’ve focused on in today’s column can be implemented relatively speedily for near-immediate benefits to your business. But nearly all of them have an added bonus: local business improvements can also brew slowly, like sun tea. You pop some tea bags and water in a jar and leave them to steep on the patio, and the longer they develop, the richer the taste of the brew. It adds up over time if you’re regularly refining your inventory for changed demand and using features like Google updates to offer specials on your deals. It amounts to something if you’re regularly responding to reviews, building a video library, and being responsive to customers via convenient texting.

These efforts don’t vanish like summer lightning. They gently build habits, content, and connections that should stand your local business in good stead in all seasons. Little efforts add up and even small improvements in your business operations can mean a lot to your customers. Cheers to your business and community this summer. Hope it’s a good one!