Andy Betts

M Posted 9 years 10 months ago

t 9 min read

One of the things we value most about Share is that the conference brings together a multitude of professionals to exchange actionable insights to the search, content, and  digital marketing industry community.  BrightEdge users and Share16 make the largest group of users in the category from the best brands from across the industries. Learn how they use they use BrightEdge product innovations to drive business impact and success. We are happy to announce that the Share16 videos are live. 

We know, however, that despite the excellent turnout we had in San Francisco this year, there were also countless marketers within the BrightEdge community that wanted to come but were unable to. These videos let you hear the outstanding session talks and learn about how the SEO and content industry from some of the best in the field, and our Share16 videos are now live on our site. Even if you were at Share, you had to pick and choose which talks to attend, and this is your opportunity to listen to some of the other great presentations that you might not have been able to attend live.

Where to begin with the Share16 videos?

There were dozens of speakers and presentations at Share this year, which means that there are now numerous videos to sort through. If you are searching for the perfect video to get started with, let us suggest one of our keynotes. Both Oracle and Google were present on the mainstage, offering a crowded room incredible information about the future of digital marketing and how brands can keep up.

Google

BrightEdge maintains a close relationship with Google and hosted 4 Google speakers at Share16. In this keynote session Thao Tran, Global Product Partnerships at Google shares insights about the latest on the mobile web. According to many sources Progressive Web Apps are the 'biggest thing to happen to the mobile web since the iPhone.’ (source MarTech today).  Topics include Google’s goal to help users have a frictionless mobile experience. Tran talks through how the web is an open, interoperable platform for marketers to build and develop experiences that can be accessed by a large potential audience with no friction.

Learn how the Chrome team, in partnership with members of the broader web browser community, has been hard at work transitioning the web platform to work well on mobile devices and the mobile web is open for business. Takeaways on Google's key changes to the web platform, including Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps (PWA) and what they mean for customers and marketers.

Oracle

Global BrightEdge customers often provide excellent thought leadership for the rest of the industry. In their keynote, Oracle explained how developments in digital technology and culture resulted in them shifting their core culture and their overall strategy to become a leader in the online world. They emphasized that in the modern digital world, when done properly, it can be difficult to know where marketing ends and sales begins. When these two groups work together, in ‘smarketing’, brands can see great ROI. Within their company, Oracle sales reps need to be comfortable with everything from social media to delivering demos. Brands need to be where their customers are in the moments that matter to be successful.

What to watch next in the Share16 videos?

Over the course of 2 days and 3 tracks: Business and Career Elevation, Content Optimization & Digital Integration, and Search Advancement and we had:

• Over 70 speakers
• Shot 360 minutes of interview video
• Showcased  32 hours of presentations

Under the Search Advancement track there where were 6 sessions for SEOs

• S101: Algorithmic Change and Response: SERP Positioning and SEM Alignment
• S102: Advanced mobile Optimization: Accelerated Mobile Performance
• S103: Data Sources and Data Sets: Mastering Analytics and Integrations

This session included this exciting talk from Adam Singer of Google Analytics

• S104: Technical Site Configuration: SEO Friendly Design, Build & Infrastructure
• S105: Global and Local Search: SEO, PPC, and Social Synergy
• S106: Insights from In-House Experts: Technical Tactics & Conversion Strategies

Under the Content Optimization & Digital Integration track there were 5 sessions for digital marketers

• CO201: Intelligent Content for the Customer Journey: Engagement & Experiences
• CO202: The Content Management Cycle: Optimizing for Scale & Efficiency
• This session included this insightful session from David Langrock of Groupon

• CO203: Metrics that Matter: Traffic, Engagement, Conversion & Revenue
• CO204: The Search, Social, and Content Marketing Trifecta: Digital Branding & PR
• CO2015: Managing Multiple Digital Channels: Finding the Perfect Mix

Under the Business and Career Elevation track there were 6 sessions for general marketers and marketing leaders

• BE301: The Digital Marketing Maturity Model: People, Process & Technology
• BE302: Creative Storytelling & Evangelizing Success: Selling Ideas and Building Business Cases
• BE303: Digital Career Success Stories: From Practitioner to Organizational Leader
• BE304: The Digital Marketing Mind: The Psychology of Self Development
• This included this fantastic talk from Adam Audette of Merkle

• BE305: Organizational Design: Building Digital Centers of Excellence
• BE306: Building an Extended Team: Working with Agencies and Contractors

During these sessions, we heard from representatives of numerous outstanding brands including Time Inc, OpenTable, Adobe, Forrester Research, Hallmark, Marriott, and Microsoft. You can find the videos you want to see by searching for particular brands, subjects, or just by looking for the session number that you are most interested in exploring. These videos are the next best thing to seeing these speakers live, so take this opportunity to listen and learn from these industry experts. Share is always an exciting conference and this year was no different. Those who joined us this past October, as well as those who were unable to attend, can now check out and gain knowledge from the sessions through these Share16 videos. It is a great way to get a taste for the Share experience.  We hope that all of you will consider joining us next year for Share17! We will be showcasing customer videos and interviewing more speakers over the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more! You can now enjoy our Share16 videos live on our site. 

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 9 years 10 months ago

t 9 min read

It’s Sunday night. You’re watching the latest episode of “The Walking Dead,” and you’re in shock over who Negan just killed with “Lucille.” Cut to commercial. You see an ad for the latest gadget that is going to make your life more complete. Your curiosity is piqued, so you grab your mobile phone and carefully enter the right search terms. What appears in Google’s Search Engine Results Page seems the perfect listing. A careful press of the screen and you are headed to a page that promises you it will contain the fastest way to make a purchase. But, hold on a sec. When you arrive on the page, the product you wanted suddenly goes away. A pop-up overtakes the screen and you try to minimize it. Instead your browser opens another tab and now you are frustrated. It’s a virtual tornado of pop-ups.

Think of the lost effort and business the first company just experienced. Its marketing team spent time targeting the right demand, creating the right content, and making sure it passed technical muster. But the company ultimately lost the business because it took its eye off the ball with User Experience on the landing page. This scenario of “UX failure” happens more than many companies would like to admit. That is why we believe that there needs to be a greater focus on the intersection of SEO and UX. In a recent BrightEdge webinar, we discussed how to bring these two seemingly unrelated schools of thought into harmony for better business results.

Our theory: by ignoring UX, you’re killing your SEO effectiveness. We discussed how this disconnected approach won’t work going forward and showed you ways to not only optimize pages for Google, but for your customers, as well.

Some takeaways:

First, you have to start with a proper definition of UX. User Experience isn’t merely design. It is the intersection of user objectives and business objectives. It’s about using simplicity to achieve these objectives. Then, you need to understand that Google isn’t just looking at your website’s content to determine Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings. In fact, Google takes your website’s UX into account when determining where you’ll fall on the SERP. This is no longer just a guess: Google confirmed it in 2015 when it said, “Landing page experience refers to how good we think someone’s experience will be when they get to your landing page.” With that, UX officially became an important ranking factor. Another element to understand is that users are finicky. They’re more fickle than a casual “Walking Dead” fan who turns the show off when their favorite character is inevitably killed off. Time and again, studies show that web users generally decide whether they’re going to spend time with your brand in less than a second. Knowing this, developing the perfect user experience is paramount.

The Lessons of SEO and UX

In the webinar, we delved into several ways to address SEO and UX, including using Google’s page speed insight tools, the correct use of schema in the SERP as UX, carrying out an intent-based search strategy, and fostering long-term collaboration. We showed you how to lead with data – not with opinion - and how to automate work flow between teams by putting BrightEdge’s full suite of powerful tools to work for your site. 

Think this is all just high-level philosophy that sounds good on paper but is too difficult to put into practice? We get that. But, think of it this way. Let’s say your site gets 400,000 monthly visitors and enjoys 10,000 average monthly website conversions worth $100 apiece. If you could tweak your UX and improve conversion rate for just a five percent lift, you’d see an additional 15,000 conversions a year worth $600,000. Got your attention yet?

Get On The Road To Higher Conversions

The webinar has passed, but the information we presented is more relevant than ever. As you end 2016 and start to look to how you’ll better engage your customers in 2017, why not learn about our approach to bringing SEO and UX together? Get started by watching the webinar to learn about Noble Studios’ SEO and UX philosophy. Then, when you’re up to speed, download our whitepaper and checklist for success. You can also access the PowerPoint slide deck from the webinar if you’re just looking for a refresher.

Ultimately, SEO and UX aren’t as distant as you might think. Good content, usability, and design all serve the purposes of both SEO and UX. Also, properly structured sites are attractive to both search engines and users at the same time. Once you grasp that UX is not just the function of the creative team, you’ll be well on your way to increased rankings, which will lead to higher page views and, ultimately, a boost in your conversions. And who doesn’t want that?