Andy Betts

M Posted 9 years 8 months ago

t 9 min read

Share16 has now officially wrapped up after some more exciting keynotes and engaging breakout sessions. The conference brought together some of the most talented minds in the industry and created an environment with great energy and a fantastic exchange of ideas.

The morning Share16 keynote

The morning of the third and final day of Share16 began with a great keynote presentation from Joyce Boland and Kelvin Gee of Oracle as well as Rachna Sethni of Facebook. Both brands discussed how marketing has transformed their organizations over the past few years and where they see themselves going. Oracle, the world’s largest enterprise software company, explored how it shifted its strategy and even its core culture, in response to the rise of modern technology and marketing. Facebook spoke about how quickly mobile has overtaken other media forms and how convenient it can be for users when everything comes together on a mobile device. Sethni says that Facebook is working to develop apps and capabilities to better bring customers and brands together, creating a superior experience for all.

The Search Track at Share16

S104: Technical Site Configuration: SEO Friendly Design, Build & Infrastructure Austin Kane Austin Kane, the Senior Manager of Search Marketing at John Wiley & Sons, spoke about the importance of valuing technical SEO. He explained that brands also need to have a proactive mindset, not just a reactive one. This means they should pay attention to strategies that can help them grow, rather than just trying to fix problems as they appear. Mark Munroe Mark Munroe is the Founder and CEO of SEORadar. He reminded us that sometimes it can feel as though you have too many cooks in the kitchen when you are trying to design a website. Munroe also spoke about how easily things can go wrong with websites, but that sometimes it can be hard to understand what exactly changed He recommends implementing monitoring processes and having deep visibility into the website.  Jacqueline Urick Jacqueline Urick, the Head of SEO for Pampered Chef, reminded us all that the developers on our teams are people, too! Improving communication can go a long way in helping everyone work together, as well as understanding the goals and pressing concerns of the different groups. Dashboards in particular can be helpful to show progress on SEO projects and to help developers understand your needs. S105: Global and Local Search: SEO, PPC, and Social Synergy Collin Colburn Collin Colburn is a researcher at Forrester Research. He spoke about the importance of creating a frictionless, anticipatory, and immersive marketing experience in the world of post-digital marketing. He drove home the point that marketers really need to do what they say; customers are not nearly as interested in what we say as they are in what we do. Consumers today are interested in personalized messages, rather than general broadcasts, and they want brands that understand the value of being human, helpful, and handy. Chad Hallert Chad Hallert is the Director of Digital Strategy at Noble Studios. He explained to the room the importance of genuinely integrating your teams. Integration requires actual change in your output, not just adding numbers together on a document. When paid search and SEO work together, for example, they can achieve great results. The data we get from the various silos and departments in our organization can all benefit others. Looking at the micro-moments in the consumer journey can also help brands identify opportunities for integration by understanding the types of content most likely to benefit customers. S106: Insights from In-House Experts: Technical Tactics & Conversion Strategies This was a question and answer opportunity with the talented Alex Bullo, the Digital Marketing Manager for SEO & Audience Acquisition at Salesforce; Kirill Kronrod, the manager of Global SEO & Search Analytics at Adobe, and Heather Mezzeta the Sr. Marketing Manager SEO at Sephora. They fielded questions from the audience, covering a range of topics, including HTTPS, scaling SEO in-house, MP, and the importance of data when communicating SEO value to those higher in the organization. The group also mentioned that the areas they are most interested in watching as we prepare to head into 2017 will be AMP in ecommerce, voice search and digital personal assistants, and artificial intelligence.

The Content Optimization and Digital Integration Track at Share16

CO204: The Search, Social, and Content Marketing Trifecta: Digital Branding & PR Rachel Freeman Rachel Freeman, the Director of Integrated Marketing and Digital at Centrify spoke about the impact of PR on SEO. In particular, she touched upon how customers make many queries before actually engaging with a brand, so having a strong brand awareness is critical. When SEO and PR work together to establish consistent communication, they can see great results. Clark Boyd Clark Boyd, the VP of Strategy at Croud, explored the ideas of impulses, habits, and emotions together. He said that there is often too much information and not enough meaning. Brands need to be thinking about improving user engagement and moving towards meaningful content measurements. We need to think beyond immediate interactions, and instead see the big picture. Bringing different disciplines together can help with tracking important metrics and understanding the impact of the content produced. Chris Attewell Chris Attewell, the SVP Americas at Search Laboratory, described the results that can be achieved when SEO and PR are brought together. When brands correctly factor PR into the rest of the marketing discipline, they can produce great results in key areas such as awareness, engagement, and market share. Attewell believes that brands should not let themselves get lost in flashy campaigns and lose sight of methods that have been shown to work, including link building. CO2015: Managing Multiple Digital Channels: Finding The Perfect Mix Cindy Phan Cindy Phan, the Senior Manager of Digital Demand Strategy at VMware, delved into the idea of managing multiple digital channels. VMware has a personalized digital framework to help them understand the audience and segment them for more effective marketing. She spoke about the importance of using 1st Party Data as a means of validating statistics on conversion and campaign performance and always outlining the goals and KPIs of campaigns before they begin. Paul Williams Paul Williams, the VP Director at Performics, explored the importance of understanding intent in the cross-channel experience. He believes that intent is the single largest performance marketing variable, which shapes queries and dictates purchase paths. He also spoke about the shift away from direct response campaigns-- like with television ads expecting people to call, to indirect response-- when customers respond by adjusting their online searches. Allen Nance Allen Nance, the CMO at Emarsys, spoke about finding the right mix between computer automation and human marketing. Data is our most valuable asset, and one day machines will be able to deliver 1:1 personalized marketing. We already use machine learning regularly, and as we rethink the role of the marketer, it will become more prominent.

The Business & Career Elevation Track at Share16

BE304: The Digital Marketing Mind: The Psychology of Self Development Dave Lloyd Dave Lloyd is the Principal Consultant of Optimization and Personalization at Adobe. He spoke about aligning personal goals with the company and team to help you grow both within your personal skill set and in your career. He addressed the importance of asking for feedback and being willing to revisit data. Lloyd also touched upon the importance of using creative storytelling to get buy-in from executives. Adam Audette Adam Audette, the SVP of SEO at Merkle, spoke about the “digital mind” and hacks to grow your career. In his 8 step career algorithm, he explored the importance of actually ‘doing’, following great leads, and not being afraid to make mistakes or ask for help. Mel Carson Mel Carson, the US Brand Ambassador for Majestic and the founder of Delightful Communications, discussed the importance of building a personal brand. By doing so, professionals can make themselves more discoverable, shareable, and memorable. This involves thinking about how you fit in your team, how to project your expertise and skills, and making the right connections. BE305: Organizational Design: Building Digital Centers of Excellence Mauricio Moreno Mauricio Moreno, the Director of SEO at Revana Digital, spoke about how to build “Centers of Excellence” and how they are integral to SEO success. Brands need to focus on three stages: pre-content generation, content generation, and analysis. This means identifying the audience and doing the research needed to know what they want to see, creating content that answers those needs, and then watching for good results during analysis. Eric Hess and Ryan Rickets Eric Hess and Ryan Rickets, Program Managers of SEO at REI, addressed the idea of splitting up SEO into Content and Technical Aspects. The two of them are a team where one handles the technical and one handles the content and they find that the system works well by leveraging the strengths of each. Garrett Mehrguth Garrett Mehrguth, the CEO of Directive Consulting, spoke about the importance of moving quickly and regularly testing. He believes that testing inputs is essential to SEO. Inputs must be measurable to be used. Mehgruth notes that there is no failing in SEO, there is only learning.

Closing Keynote at Share16

After finishing up these incredible sessions, we all gathered together again to hear the closing keynote speeches, and they were worth the wait. We first heard from the Gold-Level sponsor for the event, Chris Bennett of 97th Floor. He explored with us the idea of digital distress, that countless marketers do not feel confident in their own digital marketing abilities, or those of their organizations. He also delved into the growing importance of featured snippets and the impact they can have on traffic and brand presence. They also can offer a variety of information, including cost quotes-- effectively bringing people through much of the sales funnel before they even click on your site. Bennett also explained the concept of TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency) and how even though this is a part of Google’s patent, it is still severely underutilized by marketers. Thao Tran of Google then took the stage and spoke about the latest on the mobile web. This included discussing one of the goals of Google: to help users have a frictionless mobile experience. AMP will also ideally be compatible with a variety of different types of sites, helping all mobile users experience the fast loading sites. According to Tran, there are already 700k websites that use AMP. Tran spoke about the rise of the progressive web app, where brands can help their users have a positive experience, even offline or if they have a spotty internet connection. Many of the pioneering web apps that Tran used as examples actually originated outside the US, but American brands are expected to begin leveraging the technology soon as well. Brands can also equip their apps with capabilities like a credential manager. Ninety-two percent of customers will just give up if they forget their user name or password, and equipping the app to remember the customer when they open this page can help cut back that attrition rate. On the issue of the secure web, she also did not leave any room for discussion when she said, “HTTPS is now the web standard. The future of the web is a secure one.”  We are still feeling excited and invigorated after such an exciting week at Share16. We want to extend another warm thank you to all of our sponsors and speakers. It was wonderful to have your input and your help in making this conference so incredible. We hope that all of our attendees had as much fun as we did and we hope to see you all again next year at Share17! Learn about VSO or Vertical Search Optimization.

Andy Betts

M Posted 9 years 8 months ago

t 9 min read

We sat down to speak with Chris Bennett about Featured Snippets at Share16.

We are in the middle of the exciting Share16 conference, and we had the chance to sit down with Chris Bennett - the CEO and founder of 97th Floor-- about marketing and featured snippets. His company is the Gold sponsor for this year's Share, helping to make the event as spectacular as it is. 97th Floor is responsible for some incredibly creative and innovative work in the world of digital marketing. We were glad they were able to find the time to chat with us and share some insights with our audience.

“There is no other technology on the market that gets us the data we need to dominate Google Quick Answers like the BrightEdge platform.” - Chris Bennett, 97th Floor

BrightEdge: What is the biggest trend in marketing as we approach the end of 2016?

Chris Bennett: I would say that Google Quick Answers is one of the biggest trends in search. They have appeared with increasing frequency on a variety of queries. Switching gears, in social media, I would say that SnapChat is the most important trend. It has been rising in popularity and we project it to be a great fertile ground for marketers.

BE: What is the biggest opportunity for marketers?

CB: I believe that Featured Snippets is the biggest opportunity right now, by far. It is like the Wild West right now with ample ability for brands to grow. Here is a quick tip for you: BrightEdge will tell you what Quick Answers you rank for. To take full advantage of this, you can go and optimize your content with images. You can also run a keyword rankings report and filter by words like “who,” “what,” “how,” and other terms that fit nicely with the Quick Answers terms. Find the ones where you do not already have featured snippets and then go and prepare your content to appear in this special space on Google.

BE: What is the biggest mistake you see marketers make?

CB: I believe that all marketers are faced with the age-old problem of just not having enough time in the day. Marketers need to be effective and efficient. Too many marketers also end up shooting in the dark when it comes to content development. They produce too much content without taking the time to back up their ideas with solid data. This plays back into the idea of needing to be efficient.

BE: What are your suggestions on how to elevate SEO and content marketing with executives?

CB: Marketers that want to elevate SEO and content marketing with executives need to show them the money. They need to tighten up their tracking and reporting so they can clearly show the progress they make through their efforts. Executives want to see real, measurable results from marketing spend, so that is what you need to show them. Another quick tip: while there are likely many KPIs that executives like to see, usually they care the most about one or two. For example, they might wake up every morning and check a certain keyword or metric. You should find out what they care the most about, and then blow that KPI out of the water. This will make it significantly easier to secure budget.

BE: What are your top two marketing tips?

CB: My top two marketing tips would be the following. First, use data throughout your marketing strategy. If you do not know what type of content to build or where to focus your efforts, then go out and gather more data. Guessing and using hunches will just result in you spinning your wheels. The second thing would be trying to grab featured snippets, even if another site has it already. Use HTML Roles in your markups, so if it is a list, add the list code to the role code in the HTML. Do this in all your content. Also pay attention to your H1, H2, and H3s. Adding the snippet phrase that you are targeting into these areas can be very helpful in gaining the featured slot.

BE: What will you speak about at Share? 

CB: At Share I will speak about the importance of gathering more data so you can have confidence in your content, even before you hit publish. I will focus specifically on Featured Snippets and how you can make sure your brand dominates in content creation.

BE: Do you have any fun facts or anecdotes that you would like to share about yourself? 

CB: I start out nearly every morning with about 2 tablespoons of grass-fed butter in a homemade cocoa tea that I make. It really helps turn my brain on and gets me ready to tackle the work ahead! It was great having the opportunity to catch up with Chris, and we look forward to hearing him speak on Wednesday. Everyone here for Share16 should come to the 4pm keynote on Wednesday to hear him speak! 

A BrightEdger

M Posted 9 years 8 months ago

t 9 min read

Data, deep learning, and automation propel today's digital disruption

Digital is disrupting every aspect of how we live. Smart devices collect data to improve how we manage our health and reside in our homes. Deep learning, for example as seen in chatbots and digital assistants, is revolutionizing how we communicate, transact, and even how we make decisions. And automation, exemplified by driverless cars and unmanned aerial vehicles, helps us quickly complete necessary tasks with little effort on our part. This interplay between data, deep learning, and automation has disrupted nearly everything that we experience in our physical lives.

Digital isruption has redefined the customer journey

As digital marketers, you’ve experienced firsthand a similar digital disruption. The customer journey as we’ve known it no longer exists. It’s not structured, orderly or predictable. Instead, the customer journey is “now fractured into hundreds of new ‘micro’ touchpoints where customers seek real-time content, reviews, shared experiences and guidance online,” according to Altimeter Group. These micro touchpoints represent critical opportunities to understand what our customers are looking for and to deliver the answers that shape their decisions and preferences.

... The customer journey is “now fractured into hundreds of new ‘micro’ touchpoints where customers seek real-time content, reviews, shared experiences and guidance online,” according to Altimeter Group.

The word “disrupt” implies disorder and turmoil. In the wake of great, paradigm-shifting change, confusion ensues as we try to make sense of the loss of structure, order, and predictability that had previously existed. However, digital disruption presents an opportunity - perhaps even an obligation - for transformation. In the wake of disruption, marketers must look for signals, patterns, and other important clues, and quickly put together strategies to pull ahead of the competition. Successful marketers use disruption as a springboard for incredible success.

New digital capabilities are key to winning the moments that matter

This is where organic search is key. Organic is your market-wide voice of the customer, telling you what customers want at scale. Nearly 90 percent of consumers turn to search engines for purchase decisions. And 82 percent of smartphone users consult their phone when making an in-store purchase. We need to seek out these micro touchpoints and then create the experiences and relevant content that attracts and engages customers in these critical moments. To do so, digital marketers must understand the three pillars of digital disruption - data, deep learning, and automation - and must adopt new capabilities to stay ahead and win the moments that matter.

1. Data is the new currency. Customers seek customized experiences that fulfill what they want, when they want it, and that require little to no effort on their part. In exchange, they leave behind a wealth of personal data - giving companies the information to continue delivering enjoyable experiences. Organic search is your lifeline to understanding what your customers are looking for. Intent data offers in-the-moment context on where customers want to go and what they want to know, do, or buy. Organic search data is the critical raw material that helps you discover consumer patterns, new market opportunities, and competitive threats.
2. Connect the dots with deep learning. While data is critical, it can be overwhelming and ineffectual unless you have a means of quickly transforming it into actionable insights. Without an army of data scientists at your beck and call, deep learning presents the best means of analyzing huge, complex, and dynamic data sets to determine patterns and derive the insights you need. Deep learning is particularly important in search, where data is copious and incredibly dynamic. Identifying patterns in data in real-time makes deep learning your best first defense in understanding customer, competitor, or market changes - so that you can immediately turn these insights into a plan to win.
3. Accelerating with automation. Speed in execution is just as important as speed in data analysis. Once armed with insights, immediate action must be the next step. Automation helps you do more with less and execute more quickly. It allows you to manage routine tasks with little effort, so that you focus on high-impact activities and accomplish business goals at scale.

BrightEdge announces innovations at Share16 to help marketers win the moments that Matter

Pairing deep learning and rich insights with search automation, BrightEdge today announced three product innovations to help marketers win the moments that matter.

BrightEdge Data Mind: Every marketer has their own data scientist To deliver highly-customized experiences, digital marketers must first understand what customers care about and need. Knowing this, the BrightEdge data team set out to extract additional meaning from the more than 50 petabytes of data and the billions of pieces of content collected from Data Cube, the industry’s largest content repository, over a more than 7-year period. The result is BrightEdge DataMind, a powerful intelligence layer that instantly identifies consumer trends, competitive threats, and market shifts in real time. Powering the BrightEdge SEO platform, DataMind provides marketers with fresh, accurate and actionable insights to drive successful content strategies.  Learn more about Data Mind here.

BrightEdge Content: Enabling any marketer to create the right content faster With limited time and resources, digital marketers struggle to quickly create content on the topics that their customers care about. And without SEO expertise, they cannot ensure that web pages show up in search to actually reach target audiences. BrightEdge introduces BrightEdge Content, the smart content marketing solution that instantly performs both the analysis and optimization. Powered by BrightEdge Data Mind, BrightEdge Content uses deep learning to automatically identify high-value topics. Any marketer is able to quickly produce content that matches what their customers are looking for. And instant updates ensure that published pages are automatically optimized for search. Using BrightEdge Content, marketers are able to:

• Target demand: Select from high-value topics identified through deep learning
• Create smart content: Easy-to-use UI instantly links to existing content
• Publish fast: Deploy with one-click content that is optimized for search
• Stay optimized: Maintain SEO-friendliness of published content without additional effort

BrightEdge ContentIQ: Pinpointing and resolving site issues that matter the most to your business In fast-paced, agile environments, multiple teams across an organization are responsible for creating content to engage customers. With so many moving parts, technical errors and unplanned site changes can occur - severely impacting organic search performance and resulting in decreased traffic, conversions and revenue. BrightEdge ContentIQ is the only enterprise-grade solution that helps you pinpoint and fix the critical site errors that drive the greatest benefits to your bottom line. Powered by BrightEdge DataMind, ContentIQ seamlessly incorporates your website data, tying site errors to estimated marketing impact so that you prioritize fixes for maximum results. Using ContentIQ, marketers are able to:

• Assess: Detect critical site errors with best-in-class crawl technology
• Prioritize and take action: Fix errors that drive the greatest impact - within a single workflow
• Measure and monitor: Demonstrate improvements in traffic and revenue as errors are resolved 

If you’re attending Share, please stop by the BrightEdge booth to see demos of our latest product innovations. You can also make plans to join us for Share17, taking place November 13-15th, 2017 in San Francisco, CA.  

Andy Betts

M Posted 9 years 8 months ago

t 9 min read

We love hearing from clients using the BrightEdge platform to learn how it helps them drive success and how we can support them in their endeavors.

Share16 is now just days away. We are excitedly wrapping up the final details as we get ready to meet with some of the world's best marketers to discuss the latest trends and best practices. We spoke with the SEO team from Be Found Online, an agency based in Chicago, who is also one of our co-marketing partners. They will join us at Share, and we wanted to chat about how they use our platform in their work and how it influences their progress. It was a great conversation, so we wanted to share some highlights with you.

BrightEdge: What problems does using the BrightEdge platform help you solve?

BFO Team: "It is often difficult to find holistic, competitive data," begins SEO Analyst, Adam Woodburn. "The Share of Voice feature in conjunction with Data Cube has been quite helpful in tackling client requests and in-depth competitive analyses." Adds Dianna Kersey, the Account Director, "BrightEdge offers us valuable insight into keyword ranking opportunities, gaps in content, local 3-pack performance, data analysis, and competitive insights. Of course, we also cannot forget the importance of the smartphone search engine performance analysis as an ever increasing number of consumers use mobile."

BE: What platform functionality do you use the most?

BFO: Dianna Kersey begins, "I find myself regularly using the gap analysis, page reporting features, Share of Voice, StoryBuilder, and Recommendations. I also regularly adjust my settings to dive into the mobile and local insights so that I can see specifically how we are performing in those channels." Dalton Finney, an SEO Analyst adds, "Besides using the reporting and campaign features for regular client updates, I am also a big user of the Share of Voice capabilities to help assess competitive threats. Site audit also helps me ensure that our clients' site fundamentals are solid and the backlink reporting uncovers new potential backlink opportunities.

How does using the BrightEdge platform impact your content marketing and your editorial calendar?

BFO: Dianna Kersey explains the impact of BrightEdge: By using the Data Cube analyzer, I can compare a client’s website and review where we rank for Universal performances for more than just keywords. I can review images, videos, Quick Answers, and the local 3-pack. I can also run the GAP analysis between a client and their top competitors to determine which keywords are missing. This helps me build out a content strategy for new material and page optimization. “I have also seen some great successes over this past year. For example, I was analyzing Local 3-pack data regarding how performance changed from a Google national desktop search engine to a Google local smartphone search engine. The changes in ranking, traffic, and revenue were significantly different from the ‘near me’ local 3-pack target campaigns.”

BE: Tell us a little about your experience with the BrightEdge setup and how the platform impacts SEO support in your company.

BFO: Dianna Kersey says, “We received excellent training and technical team support that made the platform easy to setup and use. “We also use the platform for page reporting and understanding conversions at the page level. This helps us to analyze against our competitors and inform us of new optimization opportunities. The automated reports sent each week are also a huge time saver.”

BE: How useful is the industry content and resources that BrightEdge puts out?

BFO: Dalton Finney says, “I look forward to the white papers and the POVs that BrightEdge releases about changes in the SEO landscape. As opposed to many SEO blogs, BrightEdge resources focus squarely on how these changes impact our jobs and our clients and what we can do to take action today. This is very helpful.”

BE: What functions does using the BrightEdge platform uniquely enable you to tackle?

BFO: Dianna Kersey replied, “I am able to make real decisions for content, competitor optimizations, and to accurately determine and measure the impact of my prior changes. I love being able to track more than one search engine for a keyword group to truly gauge national, local, and hyperlocal rankings and performance.”

BE: What are the benefits of a fully-integrated tool versus a standalone solution?

BFO: Ben Hocking, the SEO Director for the agency, fielded this question. “A fully integrated tool becomes more and more essential the larger your company gets. Oftentimes, the biggest hurdle to SEO success in enterprise organizations is getting everyone on the same page as far as performance goes and what the next step will be to beat your competitors in organic search.”

We always enjoy getting perspective from our clients on how they use our platform and how BrightEdge helps them reach their SEO goals. We look forward to chatting more with the BFO team at Share in just a few days and we hope you will join us. Steve Krull, the co-founder of BFO will be speaking on October 25 about the content management cycle, so come listen in! We look forward to seeing everyone at Share next week.