Monley Homes

Friday, 1 May 2020

"“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““ Posted by rjonesx. When it boils down to..."

““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““

When it boils down to it, every idea in SEO can be understood as a set of measurements we use to rank one page over another. And that means that when it comes to measuring a concept like the authoritativeness of your content, there are almost certainly factors that you can analyze and tweak to improve it.

But if Google were to use a measure of content authority, what might go into it? Against what yardstick should SEOs be measuring their content’s E-A-T? In this episode of Whiteboard Friday, Russ Jones walks us through a thought experiment as to what exactly might constitute a “content authority” score and how you can begin to understand your content’s expertise like Google.

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

Video Transcription

Hey, folks, this is Russ Jones here with another Whiteboard Friday, and today we’re going to have fun. Well, at least fun for me, because this is completely speculative. We’re going to be talking about this concept of content authority and just some ideas around ways in which we might be able to measure it.

Maybe Google uses these ways to measure it, maybe not. But at the same time, hopefully what we’ll be able to do is come up with a better concept of metrics we can use to get at content authority.

Now, we know there’s a lot of controversy around this. Google has said quite clearly that expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are very important parts of their Quality Rater Guidelines, but the information has been pretty flimsy on exactly what part of the algorithm helps determine exactly this type of content.

We do know that they aren’t using the quality rater data to train the algorithm, but they are using it to reject algorithm changes that don’t actually meet these standards.

How do we measure the authoritativeness of content?

So how can we go about measuring content authority? Ultimately, any kind of idea that we talk about in search engine optimization has to boil down in some way, shape, or form to a set of measurements that are being made and in somehow shape or form being used to rank one page over another.

Now sometimes it makes sense just to kind of feel it, like if you’re writing for humans, be a human. But authoritative content is a little bit more difficult than that. It’s a little harder to just off the top of your head know that this content is authoritative and this isn’t. In fact, the Quality Rater Guidelines are really clear in some of the examples of what would be considered really highly authoritative content, like, for example, in the News section they mention that it’s written by a Pulitzer Prize winning author.

Well, I don’t know how many of you have Pulitzer Prize winning authors on your staff or whose clients have Pulitzer Prize winning authors. So I don’t exactly see how that’s particularly helpful to individuals like ourselves who are trying to produce authoritative content from a position of not being an award-winning writer.

So today I want to just go through a whole bunch of ideas, that have been running through my head with the help of people from the community who’ve given me some ideas and bounced things off, that we might be able to use to do a better job of understanding authoritative content. All right.

1. ALBERT

So these are what I would consider some of the potential measures of authoritative content. The first one, and this is just going to open up a whole rat’s nest I’m sure, but okay, ALBERT. We’ve talked about the use of BERT for understanding language by Google. Well, ALBERT, which stands for “a lighter BERT,” is a similar model used by Google, and it’s actually been trained in specific circumstances for the goal of answering questions.

Now that might not seem like a particularly big deal. We’ve been doing question answering for a whole long time. Featured snippets are exactly that. But ALBERT has jumped on the scene in such a dominant fashion as to have eclipsed anything we’ve really seen in this kind of NLP problem.

So if you were to go to the SQuAD dataset competition, which is Stanford’s Question Answering competition, where they’ve got these giant set of questions and giant set of documents and then they had humans go in and find the answers in the documents and say which documents don’t have answers and which do, and then all sorts of different organizations have produced models to try and automatically find the answers.

Well, this competition has just been going back and forth and back and forth for a really long time between a bunch of heavy hitters, like Google, Baidu, multiple Microsoft teams. We’re talking the smartest people in the world, the Allen Institute, all fighting back and forth.

Well, right now, ALBERT or variations thereof have the top 5 positions and 9 of the top 10 positions, and all of them perform better than humans. That is dominance. So we’ve got right here this incredible technology for answering questions.

Well, what does this have to do with content authority? Why in the world would this matter? Well, if you think about a document, any kind of piece of content that we produce, the intention is that we’re going to be answering the questions that our customers want answered. So any topic we start with, let’s say the topic we started with was data science, well, there are probably a lot of questions people want to know about that topic.

They might want to know: What is a data scientist? How much money do they make? What kind of things do you need to know to be a data scientist? Well, this is where something like ALBERT could come in and be extremely valuable for measuring the authoritativeness of the content. You see, what if one of the measures of the authoritative content is how well that content answers all of the related questions to the topic?

So you could imagine Google looking at all of the pages that rank for data science, and they know the top 10 questions that are asked about it, and then seeing which piece of content answers those 10 questions best. If they were able to do that, that would be a pretty awesome metric for determining how thorough and how significant and valuable and useful and authoritative that content is.

So I think this one, the ALBERT algorithm really has a lot of potential. But let’s move on from that. There are all sorts of other things that might have to do with content authority.

2. Information density

One that I really like is this idea of information density. So a lot of times when we’re writing content, especially when we’re not familiar with the topic, we end up writing a lot of fluff.

We kind of are just putting words in there to meet the word length that is expected by the contract, even though we know deep down that the number of words on the page really doesn’t determine whether or not it’s going to rank. So one of the ways that you can get at whether a piece of content is actually valuable or not or at least is providing important information is using natural language programs to extract information.

ReVerb + OpenIE

Well, the probably most popular NLP open source or at least openly available technology started as a project called ReVerb and now has merged into the Open IE project. But essentially, you can give it a piece of content, and it will extract out all of the factual claims made by that content.

So if I gave it a paragraph that said tennis is a sport that’s played with a racket and a ball and today I’m having a lot of fun, something of that sort, it would be able to identify the factual claim, what tennis is, that it’s a sport played with a racket and a ball.

But it would ignore the claim that I’m having a lot of fun today, because that’s not really a piece of information, a factual claim that we’re making. So the concept of information density would be the number of facts that can be extracted from a document versus the total number of words. All right.

If we had that measurement, then we could pretty easily sift through content that is just written for length versus content that is really information rich. Just imagine a Wikipedia article, how dense the information is in there relative to the type of content that most of us produce. So what are some other things?

3. Content style

Let’s talk about content style.

This would be a really easy metric. We could talk about the use of in-line citations, which Wikipedia does, in which after stating a fact they then link to the bottom of the page where it shows you the citation, just like you would do if you were writing a paper in college or a thesis, something that would be authoritative. Or the use of fact lists or tables of contents, like Wikipedia does, or using datelines accurately or AP style formatting.

These are all really simple metrics that, if you think about it, the types of sites that are more trustworthy more often use. If that’s the case, then they might be hints to Google that the content that you’re producing is authoritative. So those aren’t the only easy ones that we could look at.

4. Writing quality

There are a lot of other ones that are pretty straightforward, like dealing with writing quality.

How easy is it to make sure you are using correct spelling and correct grammar? But have you ever looked at the reading level? Has it ever occurred to you to make sure that the content that you’re writing isn’t written at a level so difficult that no one can understand it, or is written at a level so low as to be certainly not thorough and not authoritative? If your content is written at a third-grade level and the page is about some health issue, I imagine Google could use that metric pretty quickly to exclude your site.

There are also things like sentence length, which deals with readability, the uniqueness of the content, and also the word usage. This is a pretty straightforward one. Imagine that once again we’re looking at data science, and Google looks at the words you use on your page. Then maybe instead of looking at all sites that mention data science, Google only looks at edu sites or Google only looks at published papers and then compares the language usage there.

That would be a pretty easy way for Google to identify a piece of content that’s meant for consumers that is authoritative versus one that’s meant for consumers and isn’t.

5. Media styles

Another thing we can look at is media styles. This is something that is a little bit more difficult to understand how Google might actually be able to take advantage of.

But at the same time, I think that these are measurable and easy for search engine optimizers, like ourselves, to use.

Annotated graphs

One would be annotated graphs. I think we should move away from graph images and move more towards using open source graphing libraries. That way the actual factual information, the numbers can be provided to Google in the source code.

Unique imagery

Unique imagery is obviously something that we would care about. In fact, it’s actually listed in the Quality Rater Guidelines.

Accessibility

Then finally, accessibility matters. I know that accessibility doesn’t make content authoritative, but it does say something about the degree to which a person has cared about the details of the site and of the page. There’s a really famous story about, and I can’t remember what the band’s name was, but they wrote into their contracts that for every concert they needed to have a bowl of M&Ms, with all of the brown M&Ms removed, waiting for them in the room.

Now it wasn’t because they had a problem with the brown M&Ms or they really liked M&Ms or anything of that sort. It was just to make sure that they read the contract. Accessibility is kind of one of those things of where they can tell if you sweat the details or not.

6. Clickbait titles, author quality, and Google Scholar

Now finally, there are a couple of others that I think are interesting and really have to be talked about. The first is clickbait titles.

Clickbait titles

This is explicitly identified as something that Google looks at or at least the quality raters look at in order to determine that content is not authoritative. Make your titles say what they mean, not try to exaggerate to get a click.

Author quality

Another thing they say specifically is do you mention your author qualifications. Sure, you don’t have a Pulitzer Prize writer, but your writer has some sort of qualifications, at least hopefully, and those qualifications are going to be important for Google in assessing whether or not the author actually knows what they’re talking about.

Google Scholar

Another thing that I think we really ought to start looking at is Google Scholar. How much money do you think Google makes off of Google Scholar? Probably not very much. What’s the point of having a giant database of academic information when you don’t run ads on any of the pages? Well, maybe that academic information can be mined in a way so that they can judge the content that is made for consumers as to whether or not it is in line with, whether we’re talking about facts or language or authoritativeness, with what academia is saying about that same topic.

Now, course, all of these ideas are just ideas. We’ve got a giant question mark sitting out there about exactly how Google gets at content authority. That doesn’t mean we should ignore it. So hopefully these ideas will help you come up with some ideas to improve your own content, and maybe you could give me some more ideas in the comment section.

That would be great and we could talk more about how those might be measured. I’m looking forward to it. Thanks again.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/content-authority-potential-measures-of.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616270314666655744”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616281639008583680”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_24.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616292967341309952”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_68.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616304292433969152”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_92.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616315615564775424”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_98.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616326945256390656”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_5.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616338263619338240”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_49.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616349584270229504”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_25.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616360909348257792”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_1.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616372236273827840”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_81.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616383563274862592”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_9.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616394887282245632”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_11.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616406212688445440”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_88.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616417541795037184”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_84.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616428859591655424”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_27.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616440182399516672”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_90.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616451509225390080”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_26.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616462834578194432”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_18.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616474160217145344”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_96.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616485485221724160”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_29.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616496812082200576”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_43.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616508141765591040”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_40.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616519459503538176”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_22.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616530783958646784”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_93.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616542106316636160”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_38.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616553433137364992”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_59.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616564760757043200”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_82.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616576086913990656”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_16.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616587407933030400”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_17.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616598737108779008”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_64.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616610053608423424”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_7.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616621377437532160”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_54.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616632702308843520”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_28.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616644028282372096”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_57.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616655356455796736”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_8.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616666680570019840”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_46.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616678001740005376”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_6.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616689332953186304”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_3.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616700650418585600”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_85.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616711972591894528”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_62.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616723299871899648”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_34.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616734627069100032”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_15.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616745954453913600”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_69.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616757278636425216”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_2.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616768602685702144”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_50.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616779931832270848”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_72.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616791249139220480”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_99.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616802572606554112”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_30.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616813895763558400”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_35.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616825224196964352”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_51.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616836559609708544”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_55.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616847878309167104”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_83.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616859199563087872”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_70.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616870528965312512”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_86.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616881845407236096”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_73.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616893167508307968”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/05/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616904494893219840”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/05/posted-by-rjonesx-when-it-boils-down-to_1.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616915821149798400

"“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““ Posted by amandamilligan I couldn’t believe the response to my..."

““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““

Posted by amandamilligan

I couldn’t believe the response to my last post about coming up with content ideas in the B2C space during COVID-19. Thank you to all who read and commented — I truly hope it was helpful.

One piece of feedback we received was an ask to see some B2B content ideas, which, frankly, is an excellent subject. At first I was stumped about how to determine this, but then I decided that a different tool could do the trick.

Exploding Topics, the new tool by Brian Dean (Backlinko) and Josh Howarth, explores topics that are surging in popularity but haven’t hit their peak.

This time around, rather than focusing on specific keywords, I focused on overall trends so we can identify which categories might be of interest to your target businesses and their audiences. Then, you can examine whether these trends make sense for your niche and draw inspiration from them for your content.

All things remote

This trend obviously applies to B2C as well, but it’s an important consideration for B2B. Nearly everything has been either canceled, paused, or moved into the world of the virtual. For many companies and industries, this is uncharted territory, and they need guidance.

There is another category I could have included here that focuses on website and app development, programming, and the open source tools that help people build those types of assets as they lean more into digital.

If you’re not one of these B2B providers, there are still ways to gain inspiration from this data. Consider if your brand can provide:

The logistics of how to set up remote platforms
Best practices on how to make anything remote more successful and engaging
Comparison guides for different tools and solutions
The platform for people to lend the help and support they’re hoping to (like in the case of virtual tip jars)
Communication tips and solutions to help people stay productively connected

Shipping and delivery

Consumers are interested in having things shipped directly to them, but not everyone has the infrastructure to deal with shipping to begin with, let alone an increased order volume with the (understandable) safety limitations now in place.

Consumers and businesses alike are curious about how to make the shipping and delivery process more effective.

Consider if your brand can provide:

Guides for small businesses who’ve never had to ship product before
Tips on how companies can message shipping updates and delays to consumers
Advice on how to improve the delivery component of a business
UX or language tips for updating delivery messaging in apps or on websites

Transactions and payment

As we’re all staying six feet away from each other, we’re also trying not to hand off credit cards (let alone cash). Companies used to brick-and-mortar business models are also needing to adapt to fully digital payment systems.

Not all of these searches apply to business (like Venmo), but they do point to a concern everyone’s having: How do we pay for things now?

Consider if your brand can provide:

Answers about privacy or security questions people have regarding digital payments
A detailed list of all the payment options available
Advice on how to optimize storefronts and purchasing processes
Explanations of how payment processes can impact sales, and how to optimize them

Design tools

This section speaks to an overall trend I touched on before: Professionals now build their own assets if they can’t afford to hire web developers, designers, etc. More and more people are trying to figure out how to keep their businesses going when they can’t keep on as much staff or hire as many contractors.

Perhaps you can identify what your target audience might be struggling with and suggest free or inexpensive online tools to help.

Consider if your brand can provide:

A list of tools that can assist your target audience in communicating, organizing, creating, etc.
Design advice to help them get up to speed as quickly as possible
Resources in how to complete tasks on a smaller team
Recommendations for what should be prioritized when money is tight

Ethical trends

This is perhaps the most fascinating trend I saw arise. The four brands below have something in common: they all have to do with either sustainability or a transparent, mission-driven approach.

My theory is now that people don’t have as much disposable income, they’re becoming more mindful in their shopping choices, selecting items they believe match their own values.

Consider if your brand can provide:

A greater level of analysis on this potential trend
Research into how the consumer perspective has shifted during COVID-19
Advice on how to potentially shift marketing, branding, and advertising messaging
Tips on how your target audience can better understand their marketing during this tumultuous time

And finally (sigh of relief), marketing

Yes, as I was doing my research, my instinct that marketing would remain crucial during this time was confirmed.

That doesn’t mean you won’t lose business. We’ve had clients pull back because even though they’d like to keep marketing, keeping the company afloat by fulfilling their product orders and services and paying their employees will always (and very understandably) come first by a long shot.

But for businesses that can still afford marketing, they’ll likely need it, and they’re looking for the tools and insight they need to thrive.

Consider if your brand can provide:

Marketing 101 tips for smaller businesses
Specific how-to guides for different aspects of inbound or outbound marketing
Tool recommendations to help people get marketing tasks done quickly and cheaply
Advice on the kind of marketing that’s most successful during an economic downturn

Conclusion

Remember: This is only for inspiration. What matters most is what your target audience needs and wants. Put yourself in their shoes to be able to best address their challenges and concerns.

But hopefully some of these concepts spark some ideas for how your B2B brand can provide value to your target audiences. Companies around the world are looking for guidance and support now more than ever, and if you’re in a position to provide it to them, your content can go a long way in building trust.

”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/what-readers-want-during-covid-19-b2b.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616542107197374464”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616553433739264000”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_27.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616564761358958592”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_65.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616576087437279232”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_51.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616587408737222656”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_46.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616598737503059968”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_56.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616610054634913792”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_50.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616621378023636992”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_41.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616632703010455552”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_28.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616644028841279488”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_4.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616655356897181696”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_34.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616666681214943232”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_35.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616678002212962304”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_47.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616689333433401344”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_44.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616700651195498497”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_9.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616711971770974208”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_29.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616723299429449728”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_99.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616734626213462016”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_45.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616745953968488448”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_93.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616757277911810048”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_83.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616768602264223744”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_10.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616779931155922944”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_23.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616791248778493952”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_74.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616802571534925824”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_30.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616813894884818944”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_86.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616825223618183168”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_61.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616836559180840960”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_33.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616847877299421184”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_14.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616859198718918656”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_70.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616870528016351232”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_40.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616881844414218240”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/04/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_37.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616893166785822720”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/05/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616904494075330560”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/05/posted-by-amandamilligan-i-couldnt_1.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616915820581470208

"Posted by DiTomaso Are you mindful of your customer’s experience after they become a lead? It’s easy..."

““

Posted by DiTomaso

Are you mindful of your customer’s experience after they become a lead? It’s easy to fall in the same old rut of newsletters, invoices, and sales emails, but for a truly exceptional customer experience that improves their retention and love for your brand, you need to go above and beyond. In this popular episode of Whiteboard Friday, the ever-insightful Dana DiTomaso shares three big things you can start doing today that will immensely better your customer experience and make earning those leads worthwhile.

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

Video Transcription

Hi, Moz fans. My name is Dana DiTomaso. I’m the President and partner of Kick Point, and today I’m going to talk to you about building better customer experiences. I know that in marketing a lot of our jobs revolve around getting leads and more leads and why can’t we have all of the leads.

The typical customer experience:

But in reality, the other half of our job should be making sure that those leads are taken care of when they become customers. This is especially important if you don’t have, say, a customer care department. If you do have a customer care department, really you should be interlocking with what they do, because typically what happens, when you’re working with a customer, is that after the sale, they usually get surveys.

- Surveys

“How did we do? Please rate us on a scale of 1 to 10,” which is an enormous scale and kind of useless. You’re a 4, or you’re an 8, or you’re a 6. Like what actually differentiates that, and how are people choosing that?

- Invoices

Then invoices, like obviously important because you have to bill people, particularly if you have a big, expensive product or you’re a SaaS business. But those invoices are sometimes kind of impersonal, weird, and maybe not great.

- Newsletters

Maybe you have a newsletter. That’s awesome. But is the newsletter focused on sales? One of the things that we see a lot is, for example, if somebody clicks a link in the newsletter to get to your website, maybe you’ve written a blog post, and then they see a great big popup to sign up for our product. Well, you’re already a customer, so you shouldn’t be seeing that popup anymore.

What we’ve seen on other sites, like Help Scout actually does a great job of this, is that they have a parameter of newsletter at the end of any URLs they put in their newsletter, and then the popups are suppressed because you’re already in the newsletter so you shouldn’t see a popup encouraging you to sign up or join the newsletter, which is kind of a crappy experience.

- Sales emails

Then the last thing are sales emails. This is my personal favorite, and this can really be avoided if you go into account-based marketing automation instead of personal-based marketing automation.

We had a situation where I was a customer of the hosting company. It was in my name that we’ve signed up for all of our clients, and then one of our developers created a new account because she needed to access something. Then immediately the sales emails started, not realizing we’re at the same domain. We’re already a customer. They probably shouldn’t have been doing the hard sale on her. We’ve had this happen again and again.

So just really make sure that you’re not sending your customers or people who work at the same company as your customers sales emails. That’s a really cruddy customer experience. It makes it look like you don’t know what’s going on. It really can destroy trust.

Tips for an improved customer experience

So instead, here are some extra things that you can do. I mean fix some of these things if maybe they’re not working well. But here are some other things you can do to really make sure your customers know that you love them and you would like them to keep paying you money forever.

1. Follow them on social media

So the first thing is following them on social. So what I really like to do is use a tool such as FullContact. You can take everyone’s email addresses, run them through FullContact, and it will come back to you and say, “Here are the social accounts that this person has.” Then you go on Twitter and you follow all of these people for example. Or if you don’t want to follow them, you can make a list, a hidden list with all of their social accounts in there.

Then you can see what they share. A tool like Nuzzel, N-U-Z-Z for Americans, zed zed for Canadians, N-U-Z-Z-E-L is a great tool where you can say, “Tell me all the things that the people I follow on social or the things that this particular list of people on social what they share and what they’re engaged in.” Then you can see what your customers are really interested in, which can give you a good sense of what kinds things should we be talking about.

A company that does this really well is InVision, which is the app that allows you to share prototypes with clients, particularly design prototypes. So they have a blog, and a lot of that blog content is incredibly useful. They’re clearly paying attention to their customers and the kinds of things they’re sharing based on how they build their blog content. So then find out if you can help and really think about how I can help these customers through the things that they share, through the questions that they’re asking.

Then make sure to watch unbranded mentions too. It’s not particularly hard to monitor a specific list of people and see if they tweet things like, “I really hate my (insert what you are)right now,” for example. Then you can head that off at the pass maybe because you know that this was this customer. “Oh, they just had a bad experience. Let’s see what we can do to fix it,“without being like, "Hey, we were watching your every move on Twitter.Here’s something we can do to fix it.”

Maybe not quite that creepy, but the idea is trying to follow these people and watch for those unbranded mentions so you can head off a potential angry customer or a customer who is about to leave off at the pass. Way cheaper to keep an existing customer than get a new one.

2. Post-sale monitoring

So the next thing is post-sale monitoring. So what I would like you to do is create a fake customer. If you have lots of sales personas, create a fake customer that is each of those personas, and then that customer should get all the emails, invoices, everything else that a regular customer that fits that persona group should get.

Then take a look at those accounts. Are you awesome, or are you super annoying? Do you hear nothing for a year, except for invoices, and then, “Hey, do you want to renew?” How is that conversation going between you and that customer? So really try to pay attention to that. It depends on your organization if you want to tell people that this is what’s happening, but you really want to make sure that that customer isn’t receiving preferential treatment.

So you want to make sure that it’s kind of not obvious to people that this is the fake customer so they’re like, “Oh, well, we’re going to be extra nice to the fake customer.” They should be getting exactly the same stuff that any of your other customers get. This is extremely useful for you.

3. Better content

Then the third thing is better content. I think, in general, any organization should reward content differently than we do currently.

Right now, we have a huge focus on new content, new content, new content all the time, when in reality, some of your best-performing posts might be old content and maybe you should go back and update them. So what we like to tell people about is the Microsoft model of rewarding. They’ve used this to reward their employees, and part of it isn’t just new stuff. It’s old stuff too. So the way that it works is 33% is what they personally have produced.

So this would be new content, for example. Then 33% is what they’ve shared. So think about for example on Slack if somebody shares something really useful, that’s great. They would be rewarded for that. But think about, for example, what you can share with your customers and how that can be rewarding, even if you didn’t write it, or you can create a roundup, or you can put it in your newsletter.

Like what can you do to bring value to those customers? Then the last 33% is what they shared that others produced. So is there a way that you can amplify other voices in your organization and make sure that that content is getting out there? Certainly in marketing, and especially if you’re in a large organization, maybe you’re really siloed, maybe you’re an SEO and you don’t even talk to the paid people, there’s cool stuff happening across the entire organization.

A lot of what you can bring is taking that stuff that others have produced, maybe you need to turn it into something that is easy to share on social media, or you need to turn it into a blog post or a video, like Whiteboard Friday, whatever is going to work for you, and think about how you can amplify that and get it out to your customers, because it isn’t just marketing messages that customers should be seeing.

They should be seeing all kinds of messages across your organization, because when a customer gives you money, it isn’t just because your marketing message was great. It’s because they believe in the thing that you are giving them. So by reinforcing that belief through the types of content that you create, that you share, that you find that other people share, that you shared out to your customers, a lot of sharing, you can certainly improve that relationship with your customers and really turn just your average, run-of-the-mill customer into an actual raving fan, because not only will they stay longer, it’s so much cheaper to keep an existing customer than get a new one, but they’ll refer people to you, which is also a lot easier than buying a lot of ads or spending a ton of money and effort on SEO.

Thanks!

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/05/building-better-customer-experiences.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616904493566754816”

- http://monleyhomes.blogspot.com/2020/05/posted-by-ditomaso-are-you-mindful-of.html
from Tumblr https://monleyhomes.tumblr.com/post/616915819677581312

"Posted by rjonesx. When it boils down to it, every idea in SEO can be understood as a set of..."

“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““

Posted by rjonesx.

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

Video Transcription

Maybe Google uses these ways to measure it, maybe not. But at the same time, hopefully what we’ll be able to do is come up with a better concept of metrics we can use to get at content authority.

We do know that they aren’t using the quality rater data to train the algorithm, but they are using it to reject algorithm changes that don’t actually meet these standards.

How do we measure the authoritativeness of content?

1. ALBERT

So I think this one, the ALBERT algorithm really has a lot of potential. But let’s move on from that. There are all sorts of other things that might have to do with content authority.

2. Information density

One that I really like is this idea of information density. So a lot of times when we’re writing content, especially when we’re not familiar with the topic, we end up writing a lot of fluff.