Day one of MozCon Virtual gave us a great start to this year’s conference – from surviving the COVID news agenda, to the science of purchasing power, to game-changing ways to use the Google Search Console API. If day one was a preview of things to come, I knew we were all in for a treat as we headed into day two!
With that said, day two has arrived!
Me, rolling into #MozCon Day 2.
I’ll need to catch up on Day 1 in the recordings.
Hey @dodgejd — thanks for taking notes pic.twitter.com/4IlOxaGJna
— 👋 SEO Patti 💉 💪 (@SEOPatti) July 13, 2021
Oh, and before I forget, remember that dance breaks are not just okay, but encouraged at MozCon.
Dance breaks are not just okay at #MozCon, but encouraged. 💃 Make sure you take some time to get out of your chair and dance it out to our MozCon playlist: https://t.co/srXl8pm8gZ
— Moz (@Moz) July 13, 2021
Ross Simmonds – Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors To Drive Content Results
In this session, Ross talked about the parallels between content marketing/SEO and the world of investing. I am a lover of analogies, so I was excited to see how Ross was going to show us how an investment mindset can be applied to content marketing and SEO. As someone who loves SEO, and investing, I was pumped for this one.
Ross began by telling a story about his investment in General Motors stock. He put a lot of money into the stock…and it crashed. Ross had not done enough research into GM before making his investment.
The lesson: you need to invest time into doing your homework! You need to understand the market before you jump in. The same applies to SEO.
We all hope that our investments will deliver a return, but in 2020 we were all tested during the pandemic. Many companies put the investment of SEO on pause…and that was a mistake. Even during a recession, people still have a strong desire for content and information.
As Ross explained, every piece of content you create is an asset, and to see the most from our investments, we need to “invest more — guess less”.
There are so many types of content you can create but it’s so important to recognize the risk and reward for each type of content. 💸
What is your goal? What kind of return do you want?
“Invest more, guess less” — @TheCoolestCool#MozConpic.twitter.com/cQU0g1DdXM
— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021
Content presents money printing capabilities, and major companies are starting to realize this.
@TheCoolestCool is showing us why content marketers should think more like investors. Genius. #MozConpic.twitter.com/vxUmOp48Bv
— Tiffany Gilkey (She/Her) (@TiffanyLG23) July 13, 2021
Needless to say, Ross left us all wanting to diversify our content portfolios!
When @TheCoolestCool tells you to use more memes #MozConpic.twitter.com/XTwRzB7f3E
— Matthew Kaminsky (@m5kaminsky) July 13, 2021
Areej AbuAli — Taking Charge of Your Indexability: How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Technical Work
If you’re ready to take control of your website indexing, this session is for you! With a focus on aggregators and classifieds, Areej shared advice on how to best reduce index bloat for large websites.
Love listening to @areej_abuali talk about the ultimate head-scratcher in SEO: where to draw the line between which pages should/should not be indexed on very largescale sites where many URLs risk not being crawled/indexed.
Tip: focus on actual business KPIs!#MozConpic.twitter.com/1UXi2f6Bht
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 13, 2021
She acknowledged that, while we are fully in control of how Google crawls and indexes our site, it can feel scary!
“It’s okay to feel overwhelmed when working on something new…”
I love how open and honest @areej_abuali is – ALWAYS. This is why she’s a great friend, industry leader and her techSEO talks are the best @Moz#MozConpic.twitter.com/5SB5TOo9mx
— Shannon McGuirk (@ShannonMcGuirk_) July 13, 2021
So if we’re suggesting audits, let’s focus on recommendations that can have an impact. Let’s “drop the 100-page audit!”. Websites do not (and most probably should not) need to have every single page indexed. Instead, focus on indexing pages that have the potential to provide good search results.
Honestly, there were so many amazing insights from this presentation, this is one you’ll want to revisit!
Always love watching @areej_abuali share her insights.
So many tips !
– Manage expectations before, during and after !!
– Under-promise and Over-deliver
– Be honest and transparent – share the progress#Mozcon@Moz
Thank you Areej ! pic.twitter.com/vunXizDH6W
— J Turnbull (@SEOJoBlogs) July 13, 2021
Joy Hawkins — To Post or Not to Post: What We Learned From Analyzing Over 1,000 Google Posts
What value do Google Posts have, and how should the average SMB prioritize them? Joy Hawkins dove headfirst into the data from two studies to answer these questions.
Joy opened up by sharing a Mario Kart analogy. Joy is a super competitive person. She shared how she followed a similar approach for this study as she did when she was working towards beating Dave DiGregorio at Mario Kart. Let’s just say that it required a lot of research, tracking, and analysis.
Nothing better than hearing @SarahBird say this at #MozCon cc: @deegs20pic.twitter.com/Rs9jhlwGkf
— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 13, 2021
Joy shared a disclaimer and some initial considerations for the presentations data:
The data set only had a total of 36 conversions
Clicks in Google Analytics DO NOT equal clicks in Google My Business Insights
Study #1
The first study Joy covered analyzed over 1,000 Google Posts to see what types perform better based on clicks and conversions while measuring the impact of various features such as stock photos, emojis, titles, and more. Here are the types of Google Posts that Joy analyzed:
Offer Posts
COVID Posts
Event Posts
Update Posts
Joy also summarized the worst-performing post types. And the winners are:
Reviews
Seasonal/Holiday
Products (or services)
Who We Are (bios)
Study #2
The second study looked at whether posting on Google has any influence on where your business ranks in the local pack. The conclusion? Google Posts had no measurable impact on rankings.
Joy summarized by providing a “Successful Google Post Blueprint” — this is one to save for later!
🧐 Everything you need to know about Google Posts but were afraid to ask…here’s the blueprint from @JoyanneHawkins
🔗 https://t.co/9VblFLqgpn
#localu#smallbiz@SterlingSkyInc#MozConSwag#mozcon#mozcon2021pic.twitter.com/05rgk3ymhQ
— Andy Simpson (@ndyjsimpson) July 13, 2021
Joyce Collardé — Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing Full-Funnel Optimization for B2B Success
In this session, Joyce covered the long sales cycles for B2B businesses that pose a unique set of challenges for converting visitors into coveted users. Success requires a strategic approach that goes beyond the landing page to include your entire site.
“CRO should be a conversation with your users. They ask a question and we provide an answer.”#mozcon@JoyceCollardepic.twitter.com/OtAcHUxdN1
— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021
Joyce walked through strategies for three tried-and-true methods for increasing your conversion rate and winning more business:
Goal #1: Attracting users to your website
Goal #2: Giving users the best experience and leading them to conversion points
Goal #3: Tracking success and encouraging return visitors
Some actionable tips from @JoyceCollarde‘s talk – Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing full-funnel optimization for B2B success:
– Keep user journey in mind
– Test and track everything
– There’s no content-cutter approach
– Honesty & transparency wins#mozconpic.twitter.com/a2rGdu5BqP
— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021
Casie Gillette — Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice
I love the honesty in this tweet from Casie!
What the heck?! My presentation has already been recorded…why am I still nervous? 😬 It’s not too early for a beer right… #MozCon
— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) July 13, 2021
In her presentation, Casie looked at content from an entirely different perspective and talked about how you can start creating content on your own terms, because really, there’s no one way to do content marketing.
According to Casie, counterintuitive marketing is “the idea of bucking trends to do what is right for YOUR site”. Casie showed that more content is NOT always best. Sometimes optimizing existing content can be far more powerful than creating new content.
@Casieg#mozcon the effects of optimizing existing content and adding more CTAs throughout the site: pic.twitter.com/7x8lvm8yUB
— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021
There is no one size fits all solution to content marketing. Things change and sometimes you need to think counterintuitively.
Fantastic advise on how to evaluate your content goals and strategy!🙂@Casieg#MozCon@Mozpic.twitter.com/iSKIQSbQsk
— Laura Green (@GreenLauraV) July 13, 2021
How do we do this? Casie suggests a few focus areas:
Performance
What were your goals and did you hit them?
Utilize Google Search Console to find opportunities
Don’t copy competitors, but pay close attention to what they are doing for ideas. What is working well that we can do better?
Utilize social media platforms, such as LinkedIn where you can gather intel on the ads that your competitors are running.
Search and keywords
Don’t forget to go back each year and re-evaluate the keywords that you are targeting
Remember, that just because something is driving traffic, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right traffic.
📢📢📢”Just because something is driving traffic doesn’t mean it’s the right traffic.” — @Casieg
Re-evaluate your keywords to make sure intent matches your goals.#MozCon
— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) July 13, 2021
“All content should have a goal.” @Casieg#MozCon
— Melina Beeston (@mkbeesto) July 13, 2021
Brie E Anderson — Reporting for Duty: Why You Need to Start Using GA4 TODAY
Despite some pre-conference nerves, Brie absolutely blew us away with all her insights!
Me 10 minutes before my presentation goes live at #MozCon:
– reevaluating EVERYTHING
– do I know anything?
– I should have put my dog photos in my slides
– what would @BritneyMuller do?
– pops a buspirone
– stares at screen
Okay… let’s do this I guess 😅 pic.twitter.com/jzJmi0XXSQ
— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 13, 2021
She also challenged us to get started with GA4 now — before we have to.
Why You Need to Start Using GA4 today by @brie_e_anderson
– Collect pre-defined events
– Event-specific dashboards
– Track micro, macro events & conversions
– Better, more visual graphs
– Identify outliers fast
– Predictive analytics & AI
Start by using both GA4 & UA#mozconpic.twitter.com/VPjsHr7jaE
— Ọla King (@justolaking) July 13, 2021
Brie told us that in GA4 we’ll find:
EASY, ADVANCED, TRACKING
BADASS (& CUSTOM) VISUALS
GOOGLE MAY TELL US SECRETS
But also highlighted that it is NOT a replacement for Universal Analytics, so you need to track both.
🚨#GA4 does not bring in retrospective data! And it’s not a replacement for Universal Analytics!🚨 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon
— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021
You might ask, then what are the benefits of using GA4? I’ll let some of Brie’s fans outline some highlights:
Let’s talk about badass & custom visuals, please! @brie_e_anderson#MozConpic.twitter.com/SCUwcWWsL8
— Jason Dodge (@dodgejd) July 13, 2021
Wow!!! Go @brie_e_anderson Go!!!
Hand this over to your CEO #mozconpic.twitter.com/waWszEMvc7
— Noah Learner (He/Him) (@noahlearner) July 13, 2021
Holy analytics, Batman – #GA4 lets you *make your own line graphs* with *built-in anomaly detection*!!! This is perfect for those of us who only trust the visuals we create ourselves 😂 @brie_e_anderson#MozCon
— Kavi Kardos (@therarevos) July 13, 2021
What are you waiting for? Get your website into GA4!
Rob Ousbey — Beyond the Basics: 5 SEO Tricks for Uncovering Advanced Insights from Your SEO Data
In this session, Rob showed us how to breathe new life into our standard SEO data, and we walked away with more advanced insights — and new tools — that are sure to impress our team (and our boss!)
We all get to play with the new tool? @RobOusbey is like Oprah right now, y’all!#mozconpic.twitter.com/Z8hqH880gX
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 13, 2021
And what are the five SEO tricks?
1. Find link opportunities from the SERP
2. Group ranking keywords to spot split opportunities
3. Tag URLs to find real issues
4. Tag GA for category-level insights
5. Tag competitors’ top URLs for ideas
Be sure to check out Rob’s presentation in the MozCon video bundle when it’s out on Friday for even more amazing tips!
He’s a JavaScript Wizard!! 🧙
Thanks for such an eye opening #mozcon presentation @RobOusbey and some AWESOME #seotools . Looking forward to honing my keyword, topic, and URL clustering skills to scope out #SEO wins even faster 💨 https://t.co/GxRrKvseQp
— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021
Britney Muller — The Cold Hard Truth about CTR and Other Common Metrics
Britney closed out day two by showing us how to quash our reporting woes and make easy work of identifying exactly why your website’s performance changed.
She asked us what makes superforecasters — a group that has predicted future events with a great deal of accuracy — so successful. Before giving us the answer, she reminded us that it’s really easy to be led astray by data — but had some tips and tools to share to help make sure we don’t get too off track.
So, what made superforecasters so successful? Their ability to rethink everything. To do the same, Britney challenged us to:
Think like a scientist
Define our identity in terms of values, not opinions
Seek out information that goes against our views
@BritneyMuller I am currently rethinking everything #mozcon
— Chase Freezman (@ChaseFreezman) July 13, 2021
“seek out info that challenges your views and find joy in being wrong!!” @BritneyMuller#MozCon
AMAZING. Best quote by far. Already blown away by this talk. pic.twitter.com/5s0Zznee0g
— Elizabeth Rule (@ownyourserp) July 13, 2021
Absolutely love that @BritneyMuller‘s prez brought this quote from Austin Knight to mind – “The road to mediocrity is paved with best practices.” #MozCon
— Taylor Murchison (@TaylorMurchison) July 13, 2021
Day two — done!
Wow! Only one more day left for this year’s MozCon! What stood out the most for you on day two? Tell us on Twitter with #MozCon!