MozCon 2020 brought together incredible thought leaders who shared helpful research, advice, and insights on topics like brand marketing, machine learning, and automation, creating and promoting content, and data. Moz CEO, Sarah Bird, shared her favorite insights.
While our annual marketing conference went virtual this year, MozCon brimmed with just as much thought leadership, mind-blowing research, and tactical advice as ever. I’ve pulled together some of my favorite top insights to share for a fruitful second half of 2020.
1. Brand Marketing
a. Brand affinity over brand awareness
Video marketing expert Phil Nottingham shared a Wistia case study that indicates brand affinity can actually be more valuable than brand awareness alone.
The gist of the case study: Wistia created a four-part documentary, hosting it on their website. Earning only 31,000 viewers, it fell short of their goal by a whopping 69,000. But further investigation uncovered a different data story — Wistia found that their branded searches and acquisition were actually up. The real kicker? Viewers spent more time with those four videos than they did with the 1,700 blog posts on Wistia’s site.
Creating long-form entertainment content can be invaluable to your brand. It has even more impact when created for a sub-culture or community. Well-crafted, niche, long-form entertainment could be the key that bumps your business from a local shop to a global brand without a massive increase in budget.
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b. Keep the brand love alive
Renowned brand strategist Flavilla Fongang focused on the importance of going beyond marketing. Crafting a strong analogy between the customer-business relationship and romance, she reminded us that in both love and marketing, you can’t take it too fast. If you’re constantly trying to push someone to the next checkpoint, you’re going to scare them away — whether they’re your sales prospect or your Tinder date. On the other hand, taking things too slowly can result in lost interest and missed opportunities; offering just the right amount of time to grow the relationship is key. Add value at a consistent and steady pace to keep things moving forward.
2. Machine Learning and Automation
a. Accessible machine learning for all marketers
Advanced SEO techniques shined this year for future-forward marketers. From walking us through using Google’s Natural Language API for entity extraction to creating filterable data tables for Google Search Console, Britney Muller empowered everyone in the audience with simple workflows that even non-technical marketers could accomplish.
If you’re interested in testing either of these models for yourself, Britney made a GitHub repositoryOpens a new window complete with all of the necessary resources.
b. Taking your time back
Automating technical tasks can be a time-saver and a lifesaver for SEOs. David Sottimano shared a bounty of automated workflows, but one that stood out was using a program called Testim to record in-browser actions and automate them through an app.
Imagine being able to export link data from Google Search Console, save it to a Google Sheet, and replicate the process effortlessly with the help of an app. By recording those in-browser sessions and running the task in Testim, David can complete a previously time-consuming task with the push of a button.
Every busy marketer knows the value of reclaiming your time. Automation — especially automating technical tasks — is key to the future of successful SEO.
3. Creating and Promoting Effective Content
a. Identifying opportunities in crisis
In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, SEOs still have to make sure their brands show up in search — now more than ever, given the increased importance of Internet access during the pandemic. Dr. Peter J. Meyers shared strategic workflows aimed at better spotting trends and predicting opportunities in times of crisis. Actionable suggestions, such as following the “rising queries†and “related topics†in Google Trends, can give marketers ideas for SEO opportunities. But they can also highlight business opportunities for business owners.
Free, easily accessible resources like Consumer Insights by Think With Google, Pinterest Trends, Twitter Search, and the site Boing Boing underpinned many of the recommendations. Whether you’re a business owner or a professional SEO, Dr. Pete showed that there’s data out there that can drive our strategies — it’s just waiting for us to discover it.
b. Promoting content the right way
The brilliant Brian Dean of Backlinko shared some of his best content promotion secrets.
One of the first tactics he shared: creating content for the “linkerati.†In other words, create content that people with websites (like bloggers and journalists) can link to. Another fascinating tactic was his “expanded social post†tactic. We all know that social platforms bury posts with links in them, especially the boring ones. Brian outlined how he overcame this issue: pull a graphic or chart from your blog post and use copy that follows the following format
- Hook
- Outline
- Link
- CTA
Other tactics included things like prepopulated click-to-tweet links, valuable outreach, and using subreddits.
Learn More: Top 10 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid ThemOpens a new window
4. The Importance of Data
a. Double-check your work
Joy Hawkins schooled us on Google Search Console (GSC) data in the realm of local SEO. As she started to compare Google My Business (GMB) data to GSC data, it quickly became clear that we shouldn’t rely on the latter for good data. When it comes to local search, the majority of your analysis should be done with the most-accurate Google My Business data.
But even Google My Business isn’t to be fully trusted. Joy showed us that GMB counts “views†as any time someone has seen your name. This could be on maps (as a location pin with your name next to it), in the search engine result page, or elsewhere. That means that the “views†metric may also fall under suspicion. Instead, the numbers to focus on are the numbers given with GMB search data.
b. Next-level insights
Combining data from multiple sources is a smart way to uncover hidden insights. Robin took us through tracking your brand awareness via the power of Google Trends, Google Ads, and census data.
Plotting a brand’s ten-year searches in Google Trends in comparison to their competitors showed us the difference in brand awareness for each company over time. Taking it a step further, Robin pared the data down to a smaller area and pulled the census data for that locale. With a little data wizardry, following this process, you can use Trends and census data to calculate the actual value of each territory.
Another hot tip: Robin placed Google Ads on his competitors’ name (and sent the traffic to their site) to get Google Ads data on their brand. With this information, he was able to see his competitors’ impression share.