Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz
| @randfish | rand@moz.com The Invisible Giant That Mucks Up Our Marketing

“If anybody dares to step
outside of the box, the retaliation is swift. I have to say, after 50 years of feminism, the retaliation against “tomboy” girls has softened some over the years. The retaliation to “mama's boys” and “sissy boys” is just as violent now among peers as it has always been.” - Terrence Real, Author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression

The Invisible Giant Via halo
.

Cultural Conditioning

It’s not just gender norms.
The culture we live (and work) in biases all our actions & beliefs

Like fish in water, we
don’t realize we’re swimming in it. Via Oliver Tarling

It’s why (despite all the
data that in-office work is less productive, misery- inducing, & lower quality) most of us still commute.

It’s why, even though we
know it’s net-negative toproductivity, many of us work 50, 60, or 70+ hours in a week.

It’s why, even though we
know the archetypical “brilliant asshole” drags down team performance, they keep getting hired.

It’s why, despite awful odds
that an investor-backed tech startup will produce returns, tech entrepreneurs like me think that raising money is a celebratory milestone and a goal to strive for…

WhatAbout…
Marketing?

Let’s go from
Strategic Tactical

Marketing Culture Leads Us to
Believe: Investments Must Be Measureable

Easiest-to-Measure Channels: 1) Pay-per-click advertising
2) Social media advertising 3) Retargeted/remarketed advertising 4) Email marketing 5) Direct mail advertising

Hardest-to-Measure Channels: 1) Word of
Mouth 2) SEO 3) (organic) Social Media 4) Content Marketing 5) Public Relations

What if those channels are
easy to measure because the more measurable they are, the more money powerful corporations make from us?!

Solution: Invest X% in Hard-to-Measure
Marketing Channels Paidads+email Social+contentmarketing SEO Events+PR

Use Geography,Audiences, and/or Time-SeriesAnalyses to
Monitor Brand + Traffic Lifts Nest can see exactly how their PR launch impacted search activity via Google Trends’ upgraded toolset

With tools like Fresh Web
Explorer, Talkwalker, or Mention, you can track media mentions too.

Marketing Culture Leads Us to
Believe : Channels Must Be ROI- Positive

The Story of Whiteboard Friday…

Over Time, Effectiveness Improves! 2008
WBFisourworst-performing blogposteachweek 2017 WBFisourbest-performing contentpieceeachweek

Solution: Focus on Potential; MeasureAgainst
Trajectory Today Long-Term Potential 1Year 2Years EstimatedGrowthRate ROI-Positive If you’re here after three months of work, you’re on a powerful trajectory, even if it’s not ROI-positive yet

Marketing Culture Leads Us to
Believe : Marketers ≠ Technical

Software Engineering IS NOT the
only way to be “Technical”

Can You… Scan HTMLcode for
basic functions? Pull data viaAPIs inside Excel? Insert code snippets with Google Tag Manager? Audit websites to find technical issues? Use web crawl tools to export desired data? Test Google’s indexation of a page’s content?

Everyone Has Skill Gaps

You Have Options… Learn Hack
Outsource (or internally source) Recruit Substitute WorkAround

The Beauty of the Web
is HowAccessible These OptionsAre:

Marketing Culture Leads Us to
Believe : Search Investments Are Either SEO or PPC

SEO:

PPC:

Percent of Google Web Results
w/ only these two types of results: 54.7%

Percent of Google Clicks Going
to Other Types of Results: >11%

The Rest?

#1: Knowledge
Panels

#2: Related
Questions

#3: Local
Packs

#4: Images

#5: Sitelinks

#6: Featured
Snippets

#7: Top Stories

#8: Videos

#9: Tweets

WTF???!!!

Rand… Who the heck wants
to get RID of flying squirrels?

Breakdown of Searches on Major
Web Properties (May 2017)

Google.com Oct2016 May2017 Facebook.com Reddit.com
YouTube.com Imgur.com Bing.com Wikipedia.org Gained/Lost 59.2% 6.5% 5.4% 4.5% 2.2% 2.2% 1.4% Yahoo.com 6.0% 62.6% 5.9% 4.1% 4.7% 1.5% 2.1% 1.4% 5.0% +3.4% -0.6% -1.3% +0.2% -0.6% -0.1% +0% -1.0% Amazon.com 1.3% 1.4% +0.1%

Search Marketing in 2017 Has
to Consider: Google Images Google Maps (& Local-Biased Results) YouTube (originating searches & in GG results) Which SERP Features Show For Your Keywords Amazon, Facebook, Reddit, Bing Where Search Demand Originates

Ranking well in Image Search
often doesn’t bring much traffic or value Image Search Pro Tip

But… If you’re in a
vertical where commerce is tied to visuals, it can be quite powerful

Likewise, if lots of content
creators want your visuals, ranking here can yield loads of links

Text in images is one
way to draw in clicks for the right kinds of queries

Marketing Culture Leads Us to
Believe : Organic Reach on Facebook Ended in 2014

TheAverage Stats Look Pretty Bad
Now hovering under 2%

But You Don’t Have to
BeAverage! I’m Averaging 35.9% Reach!

#1: Earn Your Follows Through
Shares

#2: Be Wary of the
“Bad Post” Hangover Slumps follow poor performing posts And stronger reach follows better posts

#3: Find Content & Sharing
Patterns That Work, Then Stick With ‘Em

#4: Build YourAudience Off FB,
Engage YourAudience On FB

PRO TIP: Organic FB posts
work best for small->medium orgs. If you’re a bigco, take Avinash’s advice; pay.

Marketing Culture Leads Us to
Believe : Content Marketing Means Publishing on Your Website

But What If Your Site
is… New Light on LinkAuthority Lacks a Usable CMS Controlled by a Team/Client Who Won’t Let You Do What Needs Doing? Subject to Nasty Legal or Brand Restrictions

Many Websites: A) Offer Guest
Publishing Opps B) Rank Like a Boss Accepts guest contributions

Loads of Sites to Publish
to For Rankings: Via Solvid.co.uk

I’d Strongly Consider: Quora.com LinkedIn.com
YouTube.com Pinterest.com Reddit.com

STOP thinking of guest publishing
as purely a way to get links. START thinking of other people’s platforms as a way your message can spread 

Marketing Culture Leads Us to
Believe : Google Rankings = Links, Keywords, & Technical Issues

Few Links Outranking Lots of
Links?

No KWs Outranking Solid KW
Targeting?

What’s Google Ranking These With?
Sure, this might be the most interesting or click-worthy piece, but it has poor KW-targeting and little link authority?!

The New Ranking Factor: Searcher
TaskAccomplishment

This is a good SERP
– searchers rarely bounce, rarely short-click, and rarely need to enter other queries or go to page 2.

This is a bad SERP
– searchers bounce often, click other results, rarely long-click, and try other queries. They’re definitely not happy.

Via Steve Hammer

Focus on Signal:Noise Ratio –
Don’t Let Bad Pages Drag Down a Good Site Quantity of Pages Earning SERP Visits Relative Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Pgs/Visit, Searcher Satisfaction Site’s Search Engagement Reputation =

3 Options for Pages Like
These: 1) Improve them 2) Remove them (404) 3) Redirect them (301)

Marketing Culture Leads Us to
Believe : When Google Takes Your Search Traffic, You Can’t Earn It Back

They Tirk ‘Er Trafix!

When Google Gives You Lemons

Rank in Google’s “Lemon” Knowledge
Panel Take that ya Googley traffic thieves!

It’s Possible to Earn Traffic
from 90%+ of Google’s Click-Siphoning SERP Features You can do SEO to show up here And here

And here

Here And here Here too
Also here Yup!

16 Features Every SEO Should
Consider: Videounits SERPFeature Type How toGet In “PeopleAlsoAsk” FeaturedSnippet MapsBox KnowledgePanel TopStories(News) Images Apps Create&optimizeonYouTube(or,rarely,Vimeo) Branding–getsearchedforwith/afterthequery Phrasing&positionofshortanswerincontent ClaimGMB,getlinks,earncitations,benearby Earnbrandassociation,usestructuredmarkup GetinGoogleNews,earnlinks,titlew/KWs Relevantimages,altattributes,&directembeds KWsintitle/description,getpopularinappstores

Books RelatedSearches Tweets SearchSuggest Sitelinks
SectionSitelinks In-DepthArticles Carousels/ListResults Writeabook,useKWsinthetitle,haveanISBN Besearched+foundcommonlyw/theKWs Verifiedaccountshelp,useKWsintweets Asw/relatedsearches,alsogeo-sensitive Getlinks&visitstoseveralpoppgs;usemarkup Growpopularsubsectionsw/popularsubpages Authorlongerpiecesthatreceiveattention/links Belistedalongsidecommonsetsontheweb 16 Features Every SEO Should Consider: SERPFeature Type How toGet In

Analyze Which Types of SERPsAppear
Most in the Keywords You CareAbout These show me how many of each SERP type appears in the results for this keyword list (via KW Explorer)

Then Determine What Verticals &
SERPTypes You Need to Optimize For Aiming for these PAA boxes (People Also Ask) might be a great content marketing strategy for SEO

Next time you’re making a
strategic or tactical marketing decision, ask yourself: How is cultural conditioning biasing me? Not “if”

Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz
| @randfish | rand@moz.com Bit.ly/giantmuck