Andy Betts

M Posted 9 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Scott Lavelle of OpenTable discusses the evolving industry and the growth of hybrid marketers. Learn more from Scott during his Share 16 session on October 25.

“BrightEdge serves as our primary platform for SEO analysis and testing results. In addition, the Data Cube has become my 'decision engine' for opportunity sizing and competitive analysis.” - Scott Lavelle, OpenTable Here in San Francisco we are excitedly making the final preparations for Share16, which is only weeks away. As our attendee list grows, we wanted to sit down with some of our fantastic speakers to let you know about the incredible content you are going to hear during the sessions We had a great conversation recently with Scott Lavelle, the Director of Global SEO Marketing at OpenTable. We spoke about the importance of hybrid marketers and some of the latest challenges and trends in the industry.

BrightEdge: What do you see as the biggest trend in marketing as we approach the end of 2016?

Scott Lavelle: I would say better retargeting and audience segmentation. Really understanding your audience better and leveraging user-level analysis and insights so you can segment your audience. Marketing specifically to users who are at different lifecycle states. In the past, this was not super common. Marketers focused more on just using acquisition channels to get people in the door. Now everything is becoming more precise. There is new - and improved - technology and enhanced retargeting.

BE: Very interesting. What do you think is the biggest opportunity for marketers and brands who want to move forward?

SL: This ties into the advice I give in my presentation. As the industry heads more towards multi-channel marketing with significant overlap, marketers have the opportunity to break out of their silos. SEO, PPC, Display, and Paid Social for example, all overlap and these channels can drive one another. We shouldn’t be focused on “defending our turf” or convincing senior leaders that our channel is the most important - we want these channels to overlap and work together. We need to be hybrid marketers. Marketers and brands who understand the value of bringing teams together have the opportunity to grow as a brand and really mature in their marketing strategy. Having multiple channels work together really helps brands better engage their customers.

BE: What is your biggest challenge as a marketer?

SL: For me, the biggest challenge is multi-channel digital marketing attribution. It is tough. I haven’t seen any company that has the perfect set-up and no one understands with 100 percent accuracy exactly how channels overlap and should receive credit. It might actually be a bit of a false dream to pursue 100% multi-channel attribution with no overlap. It should still be a goal, however, to understand as best we can how channels drive each other and how this impacts the different parts of the funnel, including mobile apps. Sorting that out and understanding the data is probably my biggest struggle.

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

SL: When it comes to SEO, the important thing is to try and emphasize ROI. Senior leaders and executives are always thinking about marketing in terms of ROI. Most marketing has specific ad spend. SEO is different because the budget is typically fixed costs - tools, team resources - and no ad spend. It has the potential to be the highest ROI marketing channel in your mix. Executives need to understand, however, that SEO takes time, there is no instant gratification. In this way, it is the opposite of PPC. You can spend X dollars on PPC and see immediate results. In SEO, you can launch landing pages and you may have to wait months to really see results. You want to communicate to executives what it is that you are doing, when you can expect to see results, and how these actions are impacting traffic, reach, conversions, and ROI.

BE: So what are you going to speak about at Share?

SL: I will speak about the importance of being hybrid marketers and using that as a means of growing within the industry. You know, I never really thought of myself as being “an SEO”. I love SEO and have led this channel for years, but I try to take a broader view of growth drivers. More than ever, channels are overlapping and need to work together to see success. The spirit of my session will be to discuss going from doing hands-on work to becoming a marketing leader. I believe the more classic business skills outside of specific expertise in your field are what sets you apart in your career. For example, the ability to lead meetings, do presentations, create clear reports and analysis, forecasting, negotiation, persuasion, and team leadership skills. I have an MBA, and while that isn’t necessary in digital marketing, I have found my training in the broader business skills really valuable.

BE: Is there anything fun we should know about you?

SL: I am a huge music fanatic. I love to see live music and play guitar. I am even the unofficial DJ for OpenTable when we have company events! Well, I think we know who we will be speaking to when we want advice about the local music scene in the San Francisco area. We cannot wait to hear his insights about career advancement and growing in marketing.

Andy Betts

M Posted 9 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Kelly Rivard believes that user-first marketing is finally gaining the attention it deserves, while her accomplishments at Hallmark speak for themselves. Learn more from Kelly during her Share16 session on October 25.

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Kelly Rivard of Hallmark to speak about user-first marketing and her experiences over the past year helping to build a SEO in-house division in the 116 year old company. Her experience with this process means that she had some great insights to share with us.

BrightEdge has allowed Hallmark.com to essentially cut out a significant part of their manual work. DataCube and Opportunity Forecasting can do in one hour what once took 4-6. The platform highlights key opportunities while helping us identify low-hanging fruit, revamp landing pages, and uncovering the data and insights we need to take our SEO to the next level. We have been able to expand our team and reach a bandwidth that would not be possible without BrightEdge.

Here are some of the highlights from our conversation.

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

Kelly Rivard: 2016 was the year that people started to remember the user again. User-first everything is what we talk about at Hallmark, and it is critical to digital success. I consider myself to be a user-first marketing strategist and these developments have been exciting to see. Something else that ties into this idea of the user-first experience has been Google and their growing emphasis on the micro-moment; meeting the user where they are in the moment when the need arises. The entire industry seems to be shifting towards a more proactive stance of understanding the consumer. This really ties into what I see as the biggest opportunity. More and more marketers are understanding the importance of connecting with the customer. It becomes cliched, but honestly it works. You need to produce content that the audience actually wants, not just what you think will sell a product. Instead, take initiative to create new and interesting content that will start a conversation with the customer and encourage them to come back. From a retail standpoint, you want people landing on pages and buying products, but you need to first build a relationship with content people want to read, and then roll the right products into the right moment all together in the funnel.

BE: What is your biggest challenge as a marketer?

KR: Definitely helping to build an in-house SEO program from the ground up for a retailer that specializes in ink and paper. I started at Hallmark almost a year ago and no one knew how much of a difference my role would make, but we are actually seeing remarkable changes. We have consistently hit new milestones and are changing the way people think within the brand. Any company that has been around for more than 100 years, like Hallmark, will find it challenging to make these changes, but working here has been very rewarding and challenging.

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

KR: I see so many people overusing keywords like crazy. I see people thinking that the data shows they need keywords, keywords, keywords, but unless you are in a role where you sleep and eat SEO, you might not realize that optimization is more nuanced than that. These marketers often end up shooting themselves in the foot. When marketers redundantly use the same keyword repeatedly in a piece of content or stuff too many out-of-context keywords into copy just for search, it does not read well and thus will not perform as desired. Overall, I would say the biggest mistake is being too cut and dry in digital strategy - not being nuanced and “gray” enough, particularly with content strategy.

BE: What are your top two marketing tips?

KR: The first one, I would say, is to always put the customer first. I have often seen people get so caught up in KPIs that it becomes easy to forget that we will only reach our KPI goals when we meet the needs of customers. Similarly, just because you think something is best to promote your product does not mean it will be best for your customer. Always remember: user-first marketing wins. Secondly, marketers need to remember that everyone is trying to do their best. Working in marketing, it can sometimes get tense. It is a challenging field and there are usually politics and mixed priorities involved - particularly with those who do not understand what you are trying to achieve. It is best to always assume positive intent. We are all trying to work together to grow the business. Remembering that human element can help cut back on the frustrations associated with a high-stress job.

BE: Can you tell us a little about what you will speak about at Share16?

KR: I am going to be sharing insight about what it is like to help build an in-house SEO program in a company rich in legacy and history. Hallmark did not sell much on their website until a few years ago, but is now a full-fledged online and omni-channel retailer. SEO is one of many major changes we’ve made in the last few years, and we’ve grown in leaps and bounds because of it. At Share I will discuss how collaboration, open-mindedness, and the human element - remembering that everyone is doing their best - is so critical to brand success.

BE: Do you have any fun anecdotes or stories about yourself that you want to share with the audience?

KR: Oh, I have so many! I can say the alphabet backwards, for example. It is actually listed on my resume and I have done it in nearly every interview. I also recently spent a long weekend in Sweden. I am also training for my fourth half marathon. Well, I think we all know who to turn to when we want some fun stories at the networking events during Share! We look forward to hearing more about Kelly’s efforts in helping to build the Hallmark digital team and her ideas about user-first marketing when we see her in a few weeks at the event.

A BrightEdger

M Posted 9 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

BrightEdge helps customers stay ahead of Google algorithm changes - including the recent Penguin 4.0 update.

Penguin 4.0 update: more frequent, more focused crawls to eliminate webspan

As we mentioned in yesterday’s post, Google rolled out its Penguin 4.0 update last week. Now a part of the core algorithm, Penguin 4.0 update targets “black hat webspam” tactics, including keyword stuffing and spam link building, which solely aim to increase rankings. With this and other recent updates, the takeaway aligns with Google’s consistent counsel: focus on creating high quality content that will ensure a good user experience and keep customers coming back for more.

This 4th installment of Penguin is defined by a couple of specific updates. Now that it’s included within the core algorithm and occurs during routine crawls, site changes update in real-time (instead of waiting for periodic Penguin refreshes). Additionally, the impact is more granular, focusing on “spam signals” instead of entire domains.

In our prior post, we detailed the importance of understanding the backlinks to your website in compliance with the Penguin 4.0 update. We shared how the BrightEdge backlink checker is a valuable resource for identifying where backlinks from disreputable sites can negatively impact performance as well as uncovering opportunities to connect with other websites to help your content reach new and interested audiences.

BrightEdge provides backlink insights at the page level

To give you an overview, this functionality from BrightEdge is also available at the page level, within the Recommendations feature of the platform. For each of your pages, you can automatically view a list of suggested optimizations to improve performance.

When viewing the recommendations for a page URL, simply click on Link Building Opportunities to view high quality sites where building relationships can extend the reach of your content. With External Links to My Page, you can view the backlinks for that page, including the domain and the actual page linking to your page. With this information, you can use the Google disavow tool to remove the backlinks impeding your page performance. As a side note, Recommendations will also let you know if the repetition of keywords within page content is putting you at risk for violating keyword stuffing guidelines.  

With the increased granularity in last week's update, you need the insights that will help you immediately identify where you should prioritize your changes. Additionally, the real-time nature of this update means that you want to actively monitor performance. Setting Anomaly Detection alerts within the BrightEdge platform, for things like changes in rank or organic traffic, means you are immediately notified when your pages have been impacted, so that you can begin diagnosing and fixing problems. Creating StoryBuilder charts and having them emailed you to on a weekly basis is also a great way to keep an eye on performance. As search algorithms evolve, BrightEdge solutions help you hone in on the pages that matter to you, to quickly pinpoint areas for improvement and build the content and digital connections that drive more traffic, conversions and revenue.    

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 9 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Google has announced that they have made significant new Penguin updates that all website owners should be familiar with. These changes include how Penguin is incorporated into the algorithm and how it impacts sites. Google first introduced Penguin to the marketing world in 2012. The update that went live on September 23, 2016 was the fourth major update to the filter with the last one occurring in 2014. Each of the prior major updates impacted about one to three percent of queries. Google has announced that Penguin will now be a core part of the algorithm and it will update in real time. The search engine giant has also indicted that it has made the penalties more ‘granular,’ taking into account the requests it heard from some webmasters after the initial launches.  Here is what you need to understand about the new Penguin updates.  

How will the new Penguin updates impact sites?

Since Google incorporated Penguin into the core part of the algorithm and it now updates in real time, sites will run through the filter when Google crawls the page on its regular schedule. Thus, penalties or redemptions will be dealt out automatically as appropriate. This will reduce the waiting time for sites after they correct a problem so they regain their ranking. Google described this change in their Webmaster blog by saying:

Penguin is now real-time. Historically, the list of sites affected by Penguin was periodically refreshed at the same time. Once a webmaster considerably improved their site and its presence on the internet, many of Google's algorithms would take that into consideration very fast, but others, like Penguin, needed to be refreshed. With this change, Penguin's data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we re-crawl and re-index a page. It also means we're not going to comment on future refreshes.

  Secondly, Google Penguin was once a domain-wide penalty. Google indicates that the penalties will now be more measured. Specifically, they said:

Penguin is now more granular. Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site.

What can sites do to make sure their sites are ready for Penguin?

Since it has been a few years since the last Penguin update, it can be worthwhile to review what the Penguin update targets and how brands can prepare themselves. Penguin focuses on websites that artificially boost rankings through links. Its largest target has been unnatural links. ‘Black hat’ tactics such as link farms, directories or paying people to place links to their content all result in penalties. Google also watches for link exchanges, where two sites regularly link back and forth to each other. Google has also mentioned that links in press releases can violate their quality guidelines. Customers in general should focus on cultivating links that are awarded to them solely because of the quality of their content and the value they offer others.

To earn these types of high-quality links, brands should:

• Focus on creating superior content. This means their material answers a need for customers  and provides a thorough answer.
• Promoting the content across a variety of platforms. Brands need to make an effort to ensure that their targeted audience can find their material. This includes posting on social media, including information for email lists, and optimizing the material so it is easily found by search engines and users on the SERPs.
• Promote your content to topically-related blogs to attract attention to your brand and your thought leadership. Use a blog subscription function to build audience who might link.
• Use paid advertising to attract more attention to your brand and expand your reach. When you introduce people to your organization and you demonstrate value to them, they become more likely to return and link to your material.

In addition to using these steps to cultivate positive links, brands should also be ensuring that they rid their brands of any potential negative links. The BrightEdge platform includes an easy-to-use backlink checker that can help brands see which sites are linking to their page. It will also make suggestions about new potential backlink opportunities, helping brands build their backlink profiles.

When you find spam or poor-quality pages linking to your site, disavow them with the Google disavow tool immediately. Then track your ranking and traffic through the Brightedge platform to track any penalties and the recovery process. Google’s introduction of the new Penguin updates, including the real-time adjustments, will likely be a bit of a change for website owners. It continues to force everyone in the direction of user-first, ‘white-hat’ site development practices and quality content. At BrightEdge, we continue to monitor the latest news and updates so you can ensure that your site reflects the latest best practices.