The SEO Elevator Pitch - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by KameronJenkins

What is it you do again?

It's a question every SEO has had to answer at some point, whether to your family members over the holidays or to the developer who will eventually implement your suggestions. If you don't have a solid elevator pitch for describing your job, this is the Whiteboard Friday for you! Learn how to craft a concise, succinct description of life as an SEO without jargon, policing, or acting like a superhero.

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Video Transcription

Hey guys, welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Kameron Jenkins, and I work here at Moz. Today we're going to be talking about creating an SEO elevator pitch, what is it, why we need one, and what kind of prompted this whole idea for an SEO elevator pitch.

So essentially, a couple of weeks ago, I was on Twitter and I saw John Mueller. He tweeted, "Hey, I meet with a lot of developers, and a lot of times they don't really know what SEOs do." He was genuinely asking. He was asking, "Hey, SEO community, how do you describe what you do?" I'm scrolling through, and I'm seeing a lot of different answers, and all of them I'm resonating with.

They're all things that I would probably say myself. But it's just interesting how many different answers there were to the question, "What do SEOs do and what value do they provide?" So I kind of thought to myself, "Why is that? Why do we have so many different explanations for what SEO is and what we do?" So I thought about it, and I thought that it might be a good idea for myself and maybe other SEOs if you don't already have an elevator pitch ready.

What is an SEO elevator pitch?

Now, if you're not familiar with the concept of an elevator pitch, it's basically — I have a definition here — a succinct and persuasive speech that communicates your unique value as an SEO. It's called an elevator pitch essentially because it should take about the length of time it takes to ride the elevator with someone. So you want to be able to quickly and concisely answer someone's question when they ask you, "Oh, SEO, what is that?I think I've heard of that before. What do you do?"

Why is this so hard?

So let's dive right in. So I mentioned, in the beginning, how there are so many different answers to this "what do you say you do here" type question. I think it's hard to kind of come up with a concise explanation for a few different reasons. So I wanted to dive into that a little bit first.

1. Lots of specialties within SEO

So number one, there are lots of specialties within SEO.

As the industry has advanced over the last two plus decades, it has become very diverse, and there are lots of different facets in SEO. I found myself on quite a rabbit trail. I was on LinkedIn and I was kind of browsing SEO job descriptions. I wanted to see basically: What is it that people are looking for in an SEO?

How do they describe it? What are the characteristics? So basically, I found a lot of different things, but I found a few themes that emerged. So there are your content-focused SEOs, and those are people that are your keyword research aficionados. There are the people that write search engine optimized content to drive traffic to your website. You have your link builders, people that focus almost exclusively on that.

You have your local SEOs, and you have your analysts. You have your tech SEOs, people that either work on a dev team or closely with a dev team. So I think that's okay though. There are lots of different facets within SEO, and I think that's awesome. That's, to me, a sign of maturity in our industry. So when there are a lot of different specialties within SEO, I think it's right and good for all of our elevator pitches to differ.

So if you have a specialty within SEO, it can be different. It should kind of cater toward the unique brand of SEO that you do, and that's okay.

2. Different audiences

Number two, there are different audiences. We're not always going to be talking to the same kind of person. So maybe you're talking to your boss or a client. To me, those are more revenue-focused conversations.

They want to know: What's the value of what you do? How does it affect my bottom line? How does it help me run my business and stay afloat and stay profitable? If you're talking to a developer, that's going to be a slightly different conversation. So I think it's okay if we kind of tweak our elevator pitch to make it a little bit more palatable for the people that we're talking to.

3. Algorithm maturity

Three, why this is hard is there's been, obviously, a lot of changes all the time in the algorithm, and as it matures, it's going to look like the SEO's job is completely different than last year just because the algorithm keeps maturing and it looks like our jobs are changing all the time. So I think that's a reality that we have to live with, but I still think it's important, even though things are changing all the time, to have a baseline kind of pitch that we give people when they ask us what it is we do.

So that's why it's hard. That's what your elevator pitch is.

My elevator pitch: SEO is marketing, with search engines

Then, by way of example, I thought I'd just give you my SEO elevator pitch. Maybe it will spark your creativity. Maybe it will give you some ideas. Maybe you already have one, and that's okay. But the point is not to use mine.

The point is essentially to kind of take you through what mine looks like, hopefully get your creative juices flowing, and you can create your own. So let's dive right into my pitch.

So my pitch is SEO is marketing, just with search engines. So we have the funnel here — awareness, consideration, and decision.

Awareness: Rank and attract clicks for informational queries.

First of all, I think it's important to note that SEO can help you rank and attract clicks for informational queries.

Consideration: Rank and attract clicks for evaluation queries.

So when your audience is searching for information, they want to solve their pain points, they're not ready to buy, they're just searching, we're meeting them there with content that brings them to the site, informs them, and now they're familiar with our brand. Those are great assisted conversions. Rank and attract clicks for evaluation queries. When your audience is starting to compare their options, you want to be there. You want to meet them there, and we can do that with SEO.

Decision: Rank, attract clicks, and promote conversion for bottom-funnel queries

At the decision phase, you can rank and attract clicks and kind of promote conversions for bottom of funnel queries. When people are in their "I want to buy" stage, SEO can meet them there. So I think it's important to realize that SEO isn't kind of like a cost center and not a profit center. It's not like a bottom of funnel thing. I've heard that in a lot of places, and I think it's just important to kind of draw attention to the fact that SEO is integrated throughout your marketing funnel. It's not relegated to one stage or another.

But how?

We talked about rank and attract clicks and promote conversions. But how do we do that? That's the what it does.

But how do we do it? So this is how I explain it. I think really, for me, there are two sides to the SEO's coin. We have driving, and we have supporting.

1. Driving

So on the driving side, I would say something like this. When someone searches a phrase or a keyword in Google, I make sure the business' website shows up in the non-ad results. That's important because a lot of people are like, "Oh, do you bid on keywords?"

We're like, "No, no, that's PPC." So I always just throw in "non-ad" because people understand that. So I do that through content that answers people's questions, links that help search engines find my content and show signs of authority and popularity of my content, and accessibility. So that's kind of your technical foundation.

You're making sure that your website is crawlable and it that it's index the way that you want it to be indexed. When people get there, it works. It works on mobile and on desktop. It's fast. So I think these are really the three big pillars of driving SEO — content, links, and making sure your website is technically sound. So that's how I describe the driving, the proactive side of SEO.

2. Supporting

Then two, we have supporting, and I think this is kind of an underrated or maybe it's often seen as kind of an interruption to our jobs.

But I think it's important to actually call it what it is. It's a big part of what we do. So I think we should embrace it as SEOs.

A. Be the Google Magic 8-ball

For one, we can serve as the Google Magic 8-Ball. When people come to us in our organization and they say, "Hey, I'm going to make this change, or I'm thinking about making this change.Is this going to be good or bad for SEO?"

I think it's great that people are asking that question. Always be available and always make yourself ready to answer those types of questions for people. So I think on the reactionary side we can be that kind of person that helps guide people and understand what is going to affect your organic search presence.

B. Assist marketing

Two, we can assist marketing. So on this side of the coin, we're driving.

We can drive our own marketing strategies. As SEOs, we can see how SEO can drive all phases of the funnel. But I think it's important to note that we're not the only people in our organization. Often SEOs maybe they don't even live in the marketing department. Maybe they do and they report to a marketing lead. There are other initiatives that your marketing lead could be investigating.

Maybe they say, "Hey, we've just done some market research, and here's this plan." It could be our job as SEOs to take that plan, take that strategy and translate it into something digital. I think that's a really important value that SEOs can add. We can actually assist marketing as well as drive our own efforts.

C. Fix mistakes

Then number three here, I know this is another one that kind of makes people cringe, but we are here to fix mistakes when they happen and train people so that they don't happen again. So maybe we come in on a Monday morning and we're ready to face the week, and we see that traffic has taken a nosedive or something. We go, "Oh, no," and we dive in.

We try to see what happened. But I think that's really important. It's our job or it's part of our job to kind of dive in, diagnose what happened, and not only that but support and be there to help fix it or guide the fixes, and then train and educate and make sure that people know what it is that happened and how it shouldn't happen again.

You're there to help train them and guide them. I think that's another really important way that we can support as SEOs. So that's essentially how I describe it.

3 tips for coming up with your own pitch

Before I go, I just wanted to mention some tips when you're coming up with your own SEO elevator pitch. I think it's really important to just kind of stay away from certain language when you're crafting your own "this is what I do" speech.

So the three tips I have are:

1. Stay away from jargon.

If you're giving an SEO elevator pitch, it's to people that don't know what SEO is. So try to avoid jargon. I know it's really easy as SEOs. I find myself doing it all the time. There are things that I don't think are jargon.

But then I take a couple steps back and I realize, oh yeah, that's not layman's terms. So stay away from jargon if at all possible. You're not going to benefit anyone by confusing them.

2. Avoid policing.

It can be easy as SEOs I've found and I've found myself in this trap a couple of times where we kind of act as these traffic cops that are waiting around the corner, and when people make a mistake, we're there to wag our finger at them.

So avoid any language that makes it sound like the SEOs are just the police waiting to kind of punish people for wrongdoing. We are there to help fix mistakes, but it's in a guiding and educating and supporting, kind of collaborative manner and not like a policing type of manner. Number three, I would say is kind of similar, but a little different.

3. Avoid Supermanning.

I call this Supermanning because it's the type of language that makes it sound like SEOs are here to swoop in and save the day when something goes wrong. We do. We're superheroes a lot of times. There are things that happen and thank goodness there was an SEO there to help diagnose and fix that.

But I would avoid any kind of pitch that makes it sound like your entire job is just to kind of save people. There are other people in your organization that are super smart and talented at what they do. They probably wouldn't like it if you made it sound like you were there to help them all the time. So I just think that's important to keep in mind. Don't make it seem like you're the police waiting to wag your finger at them or you're the superhero that needs to save everyone from their mistakes.

So yeah, that's my SEO elevator pitch. That's why I think it's important to have one. If you've kind of crafted your own SEO elevator pitch, I would love to hear it, and I'm sure it would be great for other SEOs to hear it as well. It's great to information share. So drop that in the comments if you feel comfortable doing that. If you don't have one, hopefully this helps. So yeah, that's it for this week's Whiteboard Friday, and come back again next week for another one.

Thanks, everybody.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Karate Kid kicks it

good stugg

Alternative, Country and Gangsta

good stuff

Karate Kid kicks it

good stugg

Alternative, Country and Gangsta

good stuff

3 Big Lessons from Interviewing John Mueller at SearchLove London - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by willcritchlow

When you've got one of Google's most helpful and empathetic voices willing to answer your most pressing SEO questions, what do you ask? Will Critchlow recently had the honor of interviewing Google's John Mueller at SearchLove London, and in this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday he shares his best lessons from that session, covering the concept of Domain Authority, the great subdomain versus subfolder debate, and a view into the technical workings of noindex/nofollow.

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Video Transcription

Hi, Whiteboard Friday fans. I'm Will Critchlow from Distilled, and I found myself in Seattle, wanted to record another Whiteboard Friday video and talk through some things that I learned recently when I got to sit down with John Mueller from Google at our SearchLove London conference recently.

So I got to interview John on stage, and, as many of you may know, John is a webmaster relations guy at Google and really a point of contact for many of us in the industry when there are technical questions or questions about how Google is treating different things. If you followed some of the stuff that I've written and talked about in the past, you'll know that I've always been a little bit suspicious of some of the official lines that come out of Google and felt like either we don't get the full story or we haven't been able to drill in deep enough and really figure out what's going on.

I was under no illusions that I might be able to completely fix this this in one go, but I did want to grill John on a couple of specific things where I felt like we hadn't maybe asked things clearly enough or got the full story. Today I wanted to run through a few things that I learned when John and I sat down together. A little side note, I found it really fascinating doing this kind of interview. I sat on stage in a kind of journalistic setting. I had never done this before. Maybe I'll do a follow-up Whiteboard Friday one day on things I learned and how to run interviews.

1. Does Google have a "Domain Authority" concept?

But the first thing that I wanted to quiz John about was this domain authority idea. So here we are on Moz. Moz has a proprietary metric called domain authority, DA. I feel like when, as an industry, we've asked Google, and John in particular, about this kind of thing in the past, does Google have a concept of domain authority, it's got bundled up with feeling like, oh, he's had an easy way out of being able to answer and say, "No, no, that's a proprietary Moz metric. We don't have that."

I felt like that had got a bit confusing, because our suspicion is that there is some kind of an authority or a trust metric that Google has and holds at a domain level. We think that's true, but we felt like they had always been able to wriggle out of answering the question. So I said to John, "Okay, I am not asking you do you use Moz's domain authority metric in your ranking factors. Like we know that isn't the case. But do you have something a little bit like it?"

Yes, Google has metrics that map into similar things

John said yes. He said yes, they have metrics that, his exact quote was, "map into similar things."My way of phrasing this was this is stuff that is at the domain level. It's based on things like link authority, and it is something that is used to understand performance or to rank content across an entire domain. John said yes, they have something similar to that.

New content inherits those metrics

They use it in particular when they discover new content on an existing domain. New content, in some sense, can inherit some of the authority from the domain, and this is part of the reason why we figured they must have something like this, because we've seen identical content perform differently on different sites. We know that there's something to this. So yes, John confirmed that until they have some of those metrics developed, when they've seen a bit of content for long enough, and it can have its own link metrics and usage metrics, in the intervening time up until that point it can inherit some of this stuff from the domain.

Not wholly link-based

He did also just confirm that it's not just link-based. This is not just a domain-level PageRank type thing.

2. Subdomains versus subfolders

This led me into the second thing that I really wanted to get out of him, which was — and when I raised this, I got kind of an eye roll, "Are we really going down this rabbit hole" — the subdomain versus subfolder question. You might have seen me talk about this. You might have seen people like Rand talk about this, where we've seen cases and we have case studies of moving blog.example.com to example.com/blog and changing nothing else and getting an uplift.

We know something must be going on, and yet the official line out of Google has for a very long time been: "We don't treat these things differently. There is nothing special about subfolders. We're perfectly happy with subdomains. Do whatever is right for your business." We've had this kind of back-and-forth a few times. The way I put it to John was I said, "We have seen these case studies. How would you explain this?"

They try to figure out what belongs to the site

To his credit, John said, "Yes, we've seen them as well." So he said, yes, Google has also seen these things. He acknowledged this is true. He acknowledged that it happens. The way he explained it connects back into this Domain Authority thing in my mind, which is to say that the way they think about it is: Are these pages on this subdomain part of the same website as things on the main domain?

That's kind of the main question. They try and figure out, as he put it, "what belongs to this site." We all know of sites where subdomains are entirely different sites. If you think about a blogspot.com or a WordPress.com domain, subdomains might be owned and managed by entirely different people, and there would be no reason for that authority to pass across. But what Google is trying to do and is trying to say, "Is this subdomain part of this main site?"

Sometimes this includes subdomains and sometimes not

He said sometimes they determine that it is, and sometimes they determine that it is not. If it is part of the site, in their estimation, then they will treat it as equivalent to a subfolder. This, for me, pretty much closes this loop. I think we understand each other now, which is Google is saying, in these certain circumstances, they will be treated identically, but there are circumstances where it can be treated differently.

My recommendation stays what it's always been, which is 100% if you're starting from the outset, put it on a subfolder. There's no upside to the subdomain. Why would you risk the fact that Google might treat it as a separate site? If it is currently on a subdomain, then it's a little trickier to make that case. I would personally be arguing for the integration and for making that move.

If it's treated as part of the site, a subdomain is equivalent to a subfolder

But unfortunately, but somewhat predictably, I couldn't tie John down to any particular way of telling if this is the case. If your content is currently on a subdomain, there isn't really any way of telling if Google is treating it differently, which is a shame, but it's somewhat predictable. But at least we understand each other now, and I think we've kind of got to the root of the confusion. These case studies are real. This is a real thing. Certainly in certain circumstances moving from the subdomain to the subfolder can improve performance.

3. Noindex's impact on nofollow

The third thing that I want to talk about is a little bit more geeked out and technical, and also, in some sense, it leads to some bigger picture lessons and thinking. A little while ago John kind of caught us out by talking about how if you have a page that you no index and keep it that way for a long time, that Google will eventually treat that equivalently to a no index, no follow.

In the long-run, a noindex page's links effectively become nofollow

In other words, the links off that page, even if you've got it as a no index, follow, the links off that page will be effectively no followed. We found that a little bit confusing and surprising. I mean I certainly felt like I had assumed it didn't work that way simply because they have the no index, follow directive, and the fact that that's a thing seems to suggest that it ought to work that way.

It's been this way for a long time

It wasn't really so much about the specifics of this, but more the like: How did we not know this? How did this come about and so forth? John talked about how, firstly, it has been this way for a long time. I think he was making the point none of you all noticed, so how big a deal can this really be? I put it back to him that this is kind of a subtle thing and very hard to test, very hard to extract out the different confounding factors that might be going on.

I'm not surprised that, as an industry, we missed it. But the point being it's been this way for a long time, and Google's view and certainly John's view was that this hadn't been hidden from us so much as the people who knew this hadn't realized that they needed to tell anyone. The actual engineers working on the search algorithm, they had a curse of knowledge.

The curse of knowledge: engineers didn't realize webmasters had the wrong idea

They knew it worked this way, and they had never realized that webmasters didn't know that or thought any differently. This was one of the things that I was kind of trying to push to John a little more was kind of saying, "More of this, please. Give us more access to the engineers. Give us more insight into their way of thinking. Get them to answer more questions, because then out of that we'll spot the stuff that we can be like, 'Oh, hey, that thing there, that was something I didn't know.' Then we can drill deeper into that."

That led us into a little bit of a conversation about how John operates when he doesn't know the answer, and so there were some bits and pieces that were new to me at least about how this works. John said he himself is generally not attending search quality meetings. The way he works is largely off his knowledge and knowledge base type of content, but he has access to engineers.

They're not dedicated to the webmaster relations operation. He's just going around the organization, finding individual Google engineers to answer these questions. It was somewhat interesting to me at least to find that out. I think hopefully, over time, we can generally push and say, "Let's look for those engineers. John, bring them to the front whenever they want to be visible, because they're able to answer these kinds of questions that might just be that curse of knowledge that they knew this all along and we as marketers hadn't figured out this was how things worked."

That was my quick run-through of some of the things that I learned when I interviewed John. We'll link over to more resources and transcripts and so forth. But it's been a blast. Take care.

• Further reading: Interviewing Google’s John Mueller at SearchLove: domain authority metrics, sub-domains vs. sub-folders and more

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Why Local Businesses Will Need Websites More than Ever in 2019

Posted by MiriamEllis

64% of 1,411 surveyed local business marketers agree that Google is becoming the new “homepage” for local businesses. Via Moz State of Local SEO Industry Report

...but please don’t come away with the wrong storyline from this statistic.

As local brands and their marketers watch Google play Trojan horse, shifting from top benefactor to top competitor by replacing former “free” publicity with paid packs, Local Service Ads, zero-click SERPs, and related structures, it’s no surprise to see forum members asking, “Do I even need a website anymore?”

Our answer to this question is,“Yes, you’ve never needed a website more than you will in 2019.” In this post, we’ll examine:

• Why it looks like local businesses don’t need websites
• Statistical proofs of why local businesses need websites now more than ever
• The current status of local business websites and most-needed improvements

How Google stopped bearing so many gifts

Within recent memory, a Google query with local intent brought up a big pack of ten nearby businesses, with each entry taking the user directly to these brands’ websites for all of their next steps. A modest amount of marketing effort was rewarded with a shower of Google gifts in the form of rankings, traffic, and conversions.

Then these generous SERPs shrank to seven spots, and then three, with the mobile sea change thrown into the bargain and consisting of layers and layers of Google-owned interfaces instead of direct-to-website links. In 2018, when we rustle through the wrapping paper, the presents we find from Google look cheaper, smaller, and less magnificent.

Consider these five key developments:

1) Zero-click mobile SERPs

This slide from a recent presentation by Rand Fishkin encapsulateshis findings regarding the growth of no-click SERPs between 2016–2018. Mobile users have experienced a 20% increase in delivery of search engine results that don’t require them to go any deeper than Google’s own interface.

2) The encroachment of paid ads into local packs

When Dr. Peter J. Myers surveyed 11,000 SERPs in 2018, he found that 35% of competitive local packs feature ads.

3) Google becoming a lead gen agency

At last count, Google’s Local Service Ads program via which they interposition themselves as the paid lead gen agent between businesses and consumers has taken over 23 business categories in 77 US cities.

4) Even your branded SERPs don’t belong to you

When a user specifically searches for your brand and your Google Knowledge Panel pops up, you can likely cope with the long-standing “People Also Search For” set of competitors at the bottom of it. But that’s not the same as Google allowing Groupon to advertise at the top of your KP, or putting lead gen from Doordash and GrubHub front and center to nickel and dime you on your own customers’ orders.

5) Google is being called the new “homepage” for local businesses

As highlighted at the beginning of this post, 64% of marketers agree that Google is becoming the new “homepage” for local businesses. This concept, coined by Mike Blumenthal, signifies that a user looking at a Google Knowledge Panel can get basic business info, make a phone call, get directions, book something, ask a question, take a virtual tour, read microblog posts, see hours of operation, thumb through photos, see busy times, read and leave reviews. Without ever having to click through to a brand’s domain, the user may be fully satisfied.

“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”
- Epicurus

There are many more examples we could gather, but they can all be summed up in one way: None of Google’s most recent local initiatives are about driving customers to brands’ own websites. Local SERPs have shrunk and have been re-engineered to keep users within Google’s platforms to generate maximum revenue for Google and their partners.

You may be as philosophical as Epicurus about this and say that Google has every right to be as profitable as they can with their own product, even if they don’t really need to siphon more revenue off local businesses. But if Google’s recent trajectory causes your brand or agency to conclude that websites have become obsolete in this heavily controlled environment, please keep reading.

Your website is your bedrock

“65% of 1,411 surveyed marketers observe strong correlation between organic and local rank.” - Via Moz State of Local SEO Industry Report

What this means is that businesses which rank highly organically are very likely to have high associated local pack rankings. In the following screenshot, if you take away the directory-type platforms, you will see how the brand websites ranking on page 1 for “deli athens ga” are also the two businesses that have made it into Google’s local pack:

How often do the top 3 Google local pack results also have a 1st page organic rankings?

In a small study, we looked at 15 head keywords across 7 US cities and towns. This yielded 315 possible entries in Google’s local pack. Of that 315, 235 of the businesses ranking in the local packs also had page 1 organic rankings. That’s a 75% correlation between organic website rankings and local pack presence.

*It’s worth noting that where local and organic results did not correlate, it was sometimes due the presence of spam GMB listings, or to mystery SERPs that did not make sense at first glance — perhaps as a result of Google testing, in some cases.

Additionally, many local businesses are not making it to the first page of Google anymore in some categories because the organic SERPs are inundated with best-of lists and directories. Often, local business websites were pushed down to the second page of the organic results. In other words, if spam, “best-ofs,” and mysteries were removed, the local-organic correlation would likely be much higher than 75%.

Further, one recent study found that even when Google’s Local Service Ads are present, 43.9% of clicks went to the organic SERPs. Obviously, if you can make it to the top of the organic SERPs, this puts you in very good CTR shape from a purely organic standpoint.

Your takeaway from this

The local businesses you market may not be able to stave off the onslaught of Google’s zero-click SERPs, paid SERPs, and lead gen features, but where “free” local 3-packs still exist, your very best bet for being included in them is to have the strongest possible website. Moreover, organic SERPs remain a substantial source of clicks.

Far from it being the case that websites have become obsolete, they are the firmest bedrock for maintaining free local SERP visibility amidst an increasing scarcity of opportunities.

This calls for an industry-wide doubling down on organic metrics that matter most.

Bridging the local-organic gap

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
- Aristotle

A 2017 CNBC survey found that 45% of small businesses have no website, and, while most large enterprises have websites, many local businesses qualify as “small.”

Moreover, a recent audit of 9,392 Google My Business listings found that 27% have no website link.

When asked which one task 1,411 marketers want clients to devote more resources to, it’s no coincidence that 66% listed a website-oriented asset. This includes local content development, on-site optimization, local link building, technical analysis of rankings/traffic/conversions, and website design as shown in the following Moz survey graphic:

In an environment in which websites are table stakes for competitive local pack rankings, virtually all local businesses not only need one, but they need it to be as strong as possible so that it achieves maximum organic rankings.

What makes a website strong?

The Moz Beginner’s Guide to SEO offers incredibly detailed guidelines for creating the best possible website. While we recommend that everyone marketing a local business read through this in-depth guide, we can sum up its contents here by stating that strong websites combine:

• Technical basics
• Excellent usability
• On-site optimization
• Relevant content publication
• Publicity

For our present purpose, let’s take a special look at those last three elements.

On-site optimization and relevant content publication

There was a time when on-site SEO and content development were treated almost independently of one another. And while local businesses will need a make a little extra effort to put their basic contact information in prominent places on their websites (such as the footer and Contact Us page), publication and optimization should be viewed as a single topic. A modern strategy takes all of the following into account:

• Keyword and real-world research tell a local business what consumers want
• These consumer desires are then reflected in what the business publishes on its website, including its homepage, location landing pages, about page, blog and other components
• Full reflection of consumer desires includes ensuring that human language (discovered via keyword and real-world research) is implemented in all elements of each page, including its tags, headings, descriptions, text, and in some cases, markup

What we’re describing here isn’t a set of disconnected efforts. It’s a single effort that’s integral to researching, writing, and publishing the website. Far from stuffing keywords into a tag or a page’s content, focus has shifted to building topical authority in the eyes of search engines like Google by building an authoritative resource for a particular consumer demographic. The more closely a business is able to reflect customers’ needs (including the language of their needs), in every possible component of its website, the more relevant it becomes.

A hypothetical example of this would be a large medical clinic in Dallas. Last year, their phone staff was inundated with basic questions about flu shots, like where and when to get them, what they cost, would they cause side effects, what about side effects on people with pre-existing health conditions, etc. This year, the medical center’s marketing team took a look at Moz Keyword Explorer and saw that there’s an enormous volume of questions surrounding flu shots:

This tiny segment of the findings of the free keyword research tool, Answer the Public, further illustrates how many questions people have about flu shots:

The medical clinic need not compete nationally for these topics, but at a local level, a page on the website can answer nearly every question a nearby patient could have about this subject. The page, created properly, will reflect human language in its tags, headings, descriptions, text, and markup. It will tell all patients where to come and when to come for this procedure. It has the potential to cut down on time-consuming phone calls.

And, finally, it will build topical authority in the eyes of Google to strengthen the clinic’s chances of ranking well organically… which can then translate to improved local rankings.

It’s important to note that keyword research tools typically do not reflect location very accurately, so research is typically done at a national level, and then adjusted to reflect regional or local language differences and geographic terms, after the fact. In other words, a keyword tool may not accurately reflect exactly how many local consumers in Dallas are asking “Where do I get a flu shot?”, but keyword and real-world research signals that this type of question is definitely being asked. The local business website can reflect this question while also adding in the necessary geographic terms.

Local link building must be brought to the fore of publicity efforts

Moz’s industry survey found that more than one-third of respondents had no local link building strategy in place. Meanwhile, link building was listed as one of the top three tasks to which marketers want their clients to devote more resources. There’s clearly a disconnect going on here. Given the fundamental role links play in building Domain Authority, organic rankings, and subsequent local rankings, building strong websites means bridging this gap.

First, it might help to examine old prejudices that could cause local business marketers and their clients to feel dubious about link building. These most likely stem from link spam which has gotten so out of hand in the general world of SEO that Google has had to penalize it and filter it to the best of their ability.

Not long ago, many digital-only businesses were having a heyday with paid links, link farms, reciprocal links, abusive link anchor text and the like. An online company might accrue thousands of links from completely irrelevant sources, all in hopes of escalating rank. Clearly, these practices aren’t ones an ethical business can feel good about investing in, but they do serve as an interesting object lesson, especially when a local marketer can point out to a client, that best local links are typically going to result from real-world relationship-building.

Local businesses are truly special because they serve a distinct, physical community made up of their own neighbors. The more involved a local business is in its own community, the more naturally link opportunities arise from things like local:

• Sponsorships
• Event participation and hosting
• Online news
• Blogs
• Business associations
• B2B cross-promotions

There are so many ways a local business can build genuine topical and domain authority in a given community by dint of the relationships it develops with neighbors.

An excellent way to get started on this effort is to look at high-ranking local businesses in the same or similar business categories to discover what work they’ve put in to achieve a supportive backlink profile. Moz Link Intersect is an extremely actionable resource for this, enabling a business to input its top competitors to find who is linking to them.

In the following example, a small B&B in Albuquerque looks up two luxurious Tribal resorts in its city:

Link Intersect then lists out a blueprint of opportunities, showing which links one or both competitors have earned. Drilling down, the B&B finds that Marriott.com is linking to both Tribal resorts on an Albuquerque things-to-do page:

The small B&B can then try to earn a spot on that same page, because it hosts lavish tea parties as a thing-to-do. Outreach could depend on the B&B owner knowing someone who works at the local Marriott personally. It could include meeting with them in person, or on the phone, or even via email. If this outreach succeeds, an excellent, relevant link will have been earned to boost organic rank, underpinning local rank.

Then, repeat the process. Aristotle might well have been speaking of link building when he said we are what we repeatedly do and that excellence is a habit. Good marketers can teach customers to have excellent habits in recognizing a good link opportunity when they see it.

Taken altogether

Without a website, a local business lacks the brand-controlled publishing and link-earning platform that so strongly influences organic rankings. In the absence of this, the chances of ranking well in competitive local packs will be significantly less. Taken altogether, the case is clear for local businesses investing substantially in their websites.

Acting now is actually a strategy for the future

“There is nothing permanent except change.”
- Heraclitus

You’ve now determined that strong websites are fundamental to local rankings in competitive markets. You’ve absorbed numerous reasons to encourage local businesses you market to prioritize care of their domains. But there’s one more thing you’ll need to be able to convey, and that’s a sense of urgency.

Right now, every single customer you can still earn from a free local pack listing is immensely valuable for the future.

This isn’t a customer you’ve had to pay Google for, as you very well might six months, a year, or five years from now. Yes, you’ve had to invest plenty in developing the strong website that contributed to the high local ranking, but you haven’t paid a penny directly to Google for this particular lead. Soon, you may be having to fork over commissions to Google for a large portion of your new customers, so acting now is like insurance against future spend.

For this to work out properly, local businesses must take the leads Google is sending them right now for free, and convert them into long-term, loyal customers, with an ultimate value of multiple future transactions without Google as a the middle man. And if these freely won customers can be inspired to act as word-of-mouth advocates for your brand, you will have done something substantial to develop a stream of non-Google-dependent revenue.

This offer may well expire as time goes by. When it comes to the capricious local SERPs, marketers resemble the Greek philosophers who knew that change is the only constant. The Trojan horse has rolled into every US city, and it’s a gift with a questionable shelf life. We can’t predict if or when free packs might become obsolete, but we share your concerns about the way the wind is blowing.

What we can see clearly right now is that websites will be anything but obsolete in 2019. Rather, they are the building blocks of local rankings, precious free leads, and loyal revenue, regardless of how SERPs may alter in future.

For more insights into where local businesses should focus in 2019, be sure to explore the Moz State of Local SEO industry report:

Read the State of Local SEO industry report

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Content Comprehensiveness - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by KameronJenkins

When Google says they prefer comprehensive, complete content, what does that really mean? In this week's episode of Whiteboard Friday, Kameron Jenkins explores actionable ways to translate the demands of the search engines into valuable, quality content that should help you rank.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, guys. Welcome to this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Kameron Jenkins, and I work here at Moz.

Today we're going to be talking about the quality of content comprehensiveness and what that means and why sometimes it can be confusing. I want to use an example scenario of a conversation that tends to go on between SEOs and Google. So here we go.

An SEO usually says something like, "Okay, Google, you say you want to rank high-quality content. But what does that really mean? What is high quality, because we need more specifics than that."

Then Google goes, "Okay, high quality is something that's comprehensive and complete. Yeah, it's really comprehensive." SEOs go, "Well, wait. What does that even mean?"

That's kind of what this was born out of. Just kind of an explanation of what is comprehensive, what does Google mean when they say that, and how that differs depending on the query.

Here we have an example page, and I'll kind of walk you through it. It's just going to serve to demonstrate why when Google says "comprehensive," that can mean something different for an e-commerce page than it would for a history of soccer page. It's really going to differ depending on the query, because people want all sorts of different kinds of things. Their intent is going to be different depending on what they're searching in Google. So the criteria is going to be different for comprehensiveness. So hopefully, by way of example, we'll be able to kind of walk you through what comprehensiveness looks like for this one particular query. So let's just dive in.

1. Intent

All right. So first I'm going to talk about intent. I have here a Complete Guide to Buying a House. This is the query I used as an example. Before we dive in, even before we look into keyword research tools or anything like that, I think it's really important to just like let the query sit with you for a little bit. So "guide to buying a house," okay, I'm going to think about that and think about what the searcher probably wanted based on the query.

So first of all, I noticed "guide." The word "guide" to me makes it sound like someone wants something very complete, very thorough. They don't just want quick tips. They don't want a quick bullet list. This can be longer, because someone is searching for a comprehensive guide.

"To buying a house," that's a process. That's not like an add-to-cart like Amazon. It's a step-by-step. There are multiple phases to that type of process. It's really important to realize here that they're probably looking for something a little lengthier and something that is maybe a step-by-step process.

And too, you just look at the query, "guide to buying a house," people are probably searching that if they've never bought a house before. So if they've never bought a house before, it's just good to remember that your audience is in a phase where they have no idea what they're doing. It's important to understand your audience and understand that this is something that they're going to need very, very comprehensive, start-to-finish information on it.

2. Implications

Two, implications. This is again also before we get into any keyword research tools. By implications, I mean what is going to be the effect on someone after reading this? So the implications here, a guide to buying a house, that is a big financial decision. That's a big financial purchase. It's going to affect people's finances and happiness and well-being, and Google actually has a name for that. In their Quality Rater Guidelines, they call that YMYL. So that stands for "your money, your life."

Those types of pages are held to a really high standard, and rightfully so. If someone reads this, they're going to get advice about how to spend their money. It's important for us, as SEOs and writers crafting these types of pages, to understand that these are going to be held to a really high standard. I think what that could look like on the page is, because they're making a big purchase like this, it might be a good sign of trustworthiness to maybe have some expert quotes in here. Maybe you kind of sprinkle those throughout your page. Maybe you actually have it written by an expert author instead of just Joe Schmoe blogger. Those are just some ideas for making a page really trustworthy, and I think that's a key to comprehensiveness.

3. Subtopics

Number three here we have subtopics. There are two ways that I'll walk you through finding subtopics to fit within your umbrella topic. I'm going to use Moz Keyword Explorer as an example of this.

Use Keyword Explorer to reveal subtopics

In Moz Keyword Explorer, you can search for different keywords and related keywords two different ways. You can type in a query. So you can type in something like "buy a house" or "home buying" or something like that. You start with your main topic, and what you'll get as a result is a bunch of suggested keywords that you can also incorporate on your page, terms that are related to the term that you searched. This is going to be really great, because you're going to start to notice themes emerge. Some of the themes I noticed were people tend to search for "home buying calculator," like a can-I-afford-it type of calculator. A lot of people search financial-related things obviously, bad credit. I filed for bankruptcy, can I still buy a house? You'll start to see subthemes emerge.

Then I also wanted to mention that, in Moz Keyword Explorer, you can also search by URL. What I might do is query my term that I'm trying to target on my page. I'm going to pick the top three URLs that are ranking. You pop them into Keyword Explorer, and you can compare them and you can see the areas of most overlap. So what you'll get essentially is a list of keywords that the top ranking pages for that term also rank for. That's going to be a really good way to mine some extra keyword ideas for your page to make it more comprehensive.

4. Questions

Then here we go. We have step four. After we've come up with some subtopics, I think it's also a really good idea to mine questions and try to find what questions our audience is actually asking. So, for these, I like to use Answer the Public and Keywords Everywhere. Those are two really great tools that I kind of like to use in tandem.

Use Answer the Public to mine questions

Answer the Public, if you've never used it, is a really fun tool. You can put in a keyword, and you get a huge list. Depending on how vague your query is, you might get a ton of ideas. If your query is really specific, you might not get as many keyword ideas back. But it's a really great way to type in a keyword, like "buying a house" or "buy a house" or "home buying" or something like that, and get a whole, big, long list of questions that your audience is asking. People that want to know how to buy a house, they're also asking these questions.

I think a comprehensive page will answer those questions. But it can be a little bit overwhelming. There's going to be probably a lot of questions potentially to answer. So how do you prioritize and choose which questions are the best to address on your page?

Use Keywords Everywhere to highlight keywords on a page

That's where the Keywords Everywhere plug-in comes in handy. I use it in Chrome. You can have it highlight the keywords on the page. I think I have mine set to highlight anything that's searched 50 or more times a month. That's a really good way to gauge, just right off the bat you can see, okay, now there are these 10 instead of these 100 questions to potentially answer on my page.

So examples of questions here, I have questions like: Can I afford this? Is now the right time to buy? So you can kind of fit those into your page and answer those questions.

5. Trends

Then finally here I have trends. I think this is a really commonly missed step. It's important to remember that a lot of terms have seasonality attached to them. So what I did with this query, I queried "buy a house," and I wanted to see if there were any trends for home buying-type of research queries in Google Trends. I zoomed out to five years to see if I could see year-over-year if there were any trends that emerged.

That was totally the case. When people are searching "buy a house," it's at its peak kind of around January into spring, and then in the summer it starts to dive, and then it's at its lowest during the holidays. That kind of shows you that people are researching at the beginning of the year. They're kind of probably moving into their house during the summertime, and then during the holidays they've had all the time to move in and now they're just enjoying the holidays. That's kind of the trend flow that it follows. That's really key information, if you're going to build a comprehensive page, to kind of understand that there's seasonality attached with your term.

Because I know now that there's seasonality with my term, I can incorporate information like what are the pros and cons of buying in peak season versus off-season for buying a house. Maybe what's the best time of year to buy. Those are, again, other ideas for things that you can incorporate on your page to make it more comprehensive.

This page is not comprehensive. I didn't have enough room to fit some things. So you don't just stop at this phase. If you're really building a comprehensive page on this topic, don't stop where I stopped. But this is kind of just an example of how to go about thinking through what Google means when they say make a page comprehensive. It's going to mean something different depending on your query and just keep that in mind. Just think about the query, think about what your audience wanted based on what they searched, and you'll be off to a great start building a comprehensive page.

I hope that was helpful. If you have any ideas for building your own comprehensive page, how you do that, maybe how it differs in different industries that you've worked in, pop it in the comments. That would be really good for us to share that information. Come back again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

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The Guide to Building Linked Unstructured Citations for Local SEO

Posted by MiriamEllis

This article was written jointly in partnership with Kameron Jenkins. You can enjoy her previous articles here.

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When you’ve accomplished step one in your local search marketing, how do you take step two?

You already know that any local business you market has to have the table stakes of accurate structured citations on major platforms like Facebook, Yelp, Infogroup, Acxiom, and YP.

But what can local SEO practitioners do once they’ve got these formal listings created and a system in place for managing them? Our customers often come to us once they’ve gotten well underway with Moz Local and ask, “What’s next? What can I do to move the needle?” This blog post will give you the actionable strategy and a complete step-by-step tutorial to answer this important question.

A quick refresher on citations

Listings on formal directories are called “structured citations.” When other types of platforms (like online news, blogs, best-of lists, etc.) reference a local business’ complete or partial contact information, that’s called an “unstructured citation.” And the best unstructured citations of all include links, of course!

For example, the San Francisco branch of a natural foods grocery store gets a linked unstructured citation from a major medical center in their city via a blog post about stocking a pantry with the right ingredients for healthier eating. Google and consumers encounter this reference and understand that trust and authority are being conveyed and earned.

The more often websites that are relevant to your location or industry link to you within their own content, the better your chances of ranking well in Google’s organic and local search engine results.

Why linked unstructured citations are growing in importance right now

Link building is as old as organic SEO. Structured citation building is as old as local SEO. Both practices have long sought to influence Google rankings. But a close read of the local search marketing community these days points up an increasing emphasis on the value of unstructured citations. In fact, local links were one of the top three takeaways from the 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors survey. Why is this?

1. Google has become the dominant force in local consumer experiences, keeping as many actions as possible within their own interface instead of sending searchers to company websites. Because links influence rank within that interface, most local businesses enterprises will need to move beyond traditional structured citations to impress Google with mentions on a diverse variety of relevant websites. While structured citations are rightly referred to as “table stakes” for all local businesses, it’s the unstructured ones that can be competitive difference-makers in tough markets.
2. Meanwhile, Google is increasingly monetizing local search results. A prime example of this is their Local Service Ads (LSA) program which acts as lead gen between Google and service area businesses like plumbing and housekeeping companies. Savvy local brands (including brick-and-mortar models) will see the way the wind is blowing with this and work to form non-Google-dependent sources of traffic and lead generation. A good linked unstructured citation on a highly relevant publication can drive business without having to pay Google a dime.

Your goal with linked unstructured citations is to build your community footprint and your authority simultaneously. All you need is the right tools for the research phase!

Fishing for opportunities with Link Intersect

For the sake of this tutorial, let’s choose at random a small B&B in Albuquerque — Bottger.com — as our hypothetical client. Let’s say that the innkeeper wants to know how the big Tribal resort casinos are earning publicity and links, in the hopes of finding opportunities for a smaller hospitality business, too. *Note that these aren’t absolutely direct competitors, but they share a city and an overall industry.

We’re going to use Moz’s Link Intersect tool to do this research for Bottger Mansion. This tool could help Bottger uncover all kinds of links and unstructured linked citation opportunities, depending on how it’s used. For example, the tool could surface:

• Links that direct or near-direct competitors have, but that Bottger doesn’t
• Locally relevant links from domains/pages about Bottger’s locale
• Industry-relevant links from domains/pages about the hospitality industry

Step 1: Find the "big fish"

A client may already know who the “big fish” in their community are, or you can cast a net by identifying popular local events and seeing which businesses sponsor them. Sponsorships can be pricey, depending on the event, so if a local company sponsors a big event, it’s an indication that they're a larger enterprise with the budget to pursue a wide array of creative PR ideas. Larger enterprises can serve as models for small business emulation, at scale.

In our case study, we know that Bottger is located in Albuquerque, so we decided to locate sponsors of the famous Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Right away, we spotted two lavish Albuquerque resort-casinos — Isleta and Sandia. These are the “big fish” we want our smaller client to look to for inspiration.

Step 2: Input domains in Link Intersect

We’re going to compare Bottger’s domain to Isleta and Sandia’s domains. In Moz Pro, navigate to “Link Explorer” and then select “Link Intersect” from the left navigation. Input your domain in the top and the domains you want to mine link ideas from in the fields beneath, as depicted below.

Open Link Explorer in a new tab

Next to Bottger’s domain, we've selected “root domain” as that will show us all competitor links who haven’t linked to us at all. We’re also going to select “root domain” on the resort domains, so we can see all of their backlinks, rather than just links to particular pages on their sites.

Moz’s Link Intersect tool will let you compare your site with up to 5 competitors. It’s totally up to you how many sites you want to evaluate at once. If you’re just getting started with link building, you may want to start with just one domain, as this should yield plenty of link opportunities to start with. If you’ve already been doing some link building, you have more time to dedicate to link building, or you’d just generally rather have more options to work with, go ahead and put in multiple domains to compare.

Step 3: Find link opportunities

Once you’ve input your domain and your competitor(s) domains, click “Find Opportunities.” That will yield a list of sites that link to your competitors, but do not link to you.

In this example, we’re comparing our client’s domain against two other domains: A (Isleta) and B (Sandia). In the “Sites that intersect” column, you will see whether Site A has the link, Site B has it, or if they both have it.

Step 4: The link selection process

Now that we have a list of link ideas from Isleta and Sandia’s backlink profiles, it’s time to decide which ones might yield good opportunities for our B&B. That’s right — just because something is in a competitor’s link profile doesn’t necessarily mean you want it!

View the referring pages

The first step is to drill down and get more detail about links the big resorts have. Select the arrow to expand this section and view the exact page the link is coming from.

In this example, both Sandia and Isleta have links from the root domain marriott.com. By using the “expand” feature, we can see the exact pages those links are located on.

Identify follow or no-follow

You can use the MozBar Chrome plugin to view whether your competitor’s link is no-followed or followed. Since only followed links pass authority, you may want to prioritize those, but no-followed links can also have value in the form of generating traffic to your site and could get picked up by others who do eventually link to your site with a follow link.

Select the MozBar icon from your browser and click the pencil icon. If you want to see Followed links, select “Followed” and the MozBar will highlight these links on the page in green. To find No-Followed links, click “No-Followed” and MozBar will highlight these links on the page in pink.

Common types of links you’ll see in the profiles of local business websites

If this is your first foray into link building for local businesses, you may be unfamiliar with the types of sites you’ll see in Link Intersect. While no two link profiles are exactly the same, many local businesses use similar methods for building links, so there are some common categories to be aware of. Knowing these will help you decipher the results Link Intersect will show you.

Types of links and what you can do with them:

Press releases

Press release sites like PRweb.com and PRnewsire.com are fairly common among local businesses that want to spread the word about their initiatives. Whether someone at the business won an award or they started a new community outreach program, local businesses often pay companies like PRweb.com to distribute this news on their platform and to their partners. These are no-followed links (don’t pass link authority aka “SEO value”) but they can offer valuable traffic and could even get picked up by sites that do link with a follow link.

If your competitor is utilizing press releases, you may want to consider distributing your newsworthy information this way!

Structured citations / directories

One of the primary types of domains you’ll see in a local business’ backlink profile is directories — structured citation websites like yellowpages.com that list a business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP) with a link back to the business’ website. Because they’re self-created and not editorially given, like Press Releases, they are often no-followed. However, having consistent and accurate citations across major directory websites is a key foundational step in local search performance.

If you see these types of sites in Link Intersect, it may indicate your need for a listings management solution like Moz Local that can ensure your NAP is accurate and available across major directories. Typically, you’ll want to have these table stakes before focusing on unstructured linked citations.

News coverage

Another favorite among local businesses is local media coverage (or just media coverage in general — it’s not always local). HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a popular service for connecting journalists to subject matter experts who may be valuable sources for their articles. The journalists will typically link your quote back to your website. Aside from services like HARO, local businesses would do well to make media contacts, such as forming relationships with local news correspondents. As news surfaces, they’ll start reaching out to you for comment!

If you see news coverage in your competitor’s backlink profile, you can get ideas of what types of publications want content and information that you can provide.

Local / industry coverage

Blogs, hobby sites, DIY sites, and other platforms can feature content that depicts city life or interest in a topic. For example, a chef might author a popular blog covering their dining experiences in San Francisco. For a local restaurant, being cited by this publication could be valuable.

If you see popular local or industry sites in your competitor’s backlink profile, it’s a good signal of opportunity for your business to build a relationship with the authors in hopes of gaining links.

Trade organizations

Most local businesses are affiliated with some type of governing/regulating body, trade organization, award organization, etc. Many of these organizations have websites themselves, and they often list the businesses they’re affiliated with.

If your competitor is involved with an organization, that means your business is likely suited to be involved as well! Use these links to get ideas of which organizations to join.

Community organizations

Community organizations are a great local validator for search engines, and many local businesses have taken notice. You’ll likely find these types of organizations’ websites in your competitor’s backlink profile, such as Chamber of Commerce websites or the local YMCA.

As a local business, your competitors are in the same locale as you, so take note of these community organizations and consider joining them. You’ll not only get the benefit of better community involvement, but you can get a link out of it too!

Sponsorships / event participation

Local businesses can sponsor, donate to, host or participate in community events, teams, and other cherished local resources, which can lead to both online and offline publicity.

Local businesses can earn great links from online press surrounding these groups and happening. If an event/team page highlights you, but doesn’t actually link to benefactors/participants, don’t be shy about politely requesting a link.

Scholarships / .edu sites

A popular strategy used by many local businesses and non-local businesses alike is scholarship link building. Businesses figured out that if they offered a scholarship, they could get a link back to their site on education websites, such as .edu domains. Everyone seemed to catch on — so much so that many schools stopped featuring these scholarships on their site. It’s also important to note that .edu domains don’t inherently have more value than domains on any other TLD.

If your business wants to offer a scholarship, that is a great thing! We encourage you to pursue this for the benefit it could offer students, rather than primarily for the purpose of gaining links. Scholarship link building has become very saturated, and could be a strategy with diminishing returns, so don’t put all your eggs in this basket, and do it first and foremost for students instead of links.

Other businesses

Businesses may sometimes partner with each other for mutually beneficial link opportunities. Co-marketing opportunities that are a byproduct of genuine relationships can present valuable link opportunities, but link exchanges are against Google’s quality guidelines.

Stay away from “you link to me, I’ll link to you” opportunities as Google can see it as an attempt to manipulate your site’s ranking in search, but don’t be afraid to pursue genuine connections with other businesses that can turn into linking opportunities.

Spam

Just because your competitor has that link doesn’t mean you want it too! In Link Intersect, pay attention to the domain’s Spam Score and DA. A high spam score and/or low DA can indicate that the link wouldn’t be valuable for your site, and may even harm it.

Also watch out for links generated from comments. If your competitor has links in their backlink profile coming from comments, you can safely ignore these as they do not present real opportunities for earning links that will move the needle in the right direction.

Now that you’re familiar with popular types of local backlinks and what you can do with them, let’s actually dig into Isleta and Sandia’s backlinks to see which might be good prospects for us.

Step 5: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Both the Albuquerque Marriott and Hilton Garden Inn link to Isleta and Sandia on their “Local Things to Do” pages. This could be a great prospect for Bottger! In many cases, “things to do” pages will include lists of local restaurants, historic sites, attractions, shops, and more. Note how their addresses are included on the following pages, making them powerful linked unstructured citations. Bottger hosts fancy tea parties in a lovely setting, which could be a fun thing for tourists to do.

Isleta and Sandia also have links from a wedding website. If Bottger uses their property as a wedding venue, offers special wedding or engagement packages, or something similar, this could be a great prospect as well.

Link Intersect also yielded links to various travel guide websites. There are plenty of links on websites like these to local attractions. In the following example, you can see an Albuquerque travel guide that's broken up by category, “hotels” being one of them:

Isleta and Sandia also have been featured in the Albuquerque Journal. In this example, a local reporter covered news that Isleta was opening expanded bingo and poker rooms. This seems to be a journalist who covers local businesses, so she could be a great connection to make!

Many other links in Isleta and Sandia’s backlink profiles came from sources like events websites, since these resorts are large enough to serve as the venue for major events like concerts and MMA matches. Although Bottger isn’t large enough to host an event of that magnitude, it could spark good ideas for link building opportunities in the future. Maybe Bottger could host a small community tea tasting event featuring locally sourced herbal teas and get in touch with a local reporter to promote it. Even competitor links that you can’t directly pursue can spark your creativity for related link building opportunities.

And let’s not forget how we found out about Isleta and Sandia in the first place: the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta! Event sponsors are featured on an “official sponsors” page with links to their websites. This is a classic, locally relevant opportunity for any Albuquerque business.

Step 6: Compile your link prospects in Link Tracking Lists

If you’re thinking, “This sounds great, but it also sounds like a lot of work. How am I ever going to keep track of all this?” — we’ve got you covered!

Moz Pro’s “Link Tracking Lists” was built for just this purpose.

In Link Intersect, you’ll see little check boxes next to all your competitors’ links. When you find one you want to target, check the box. When you’re done going through all the links and have checked the boxes next to the domains you want to pursue, click “Add to Link Tracking List” at the top right.

Since we’ve never done link building for Bottger before, we’re going to select “Create New List” from the dropdown, and label it something descriptive.

Make sure to put your client’s domain in the “target URL” field. For Step 3, since we’ve just selected the links we want to track from Link Intersect, those will already be populated in this field, so no further action is needed other than to click “Save.”

We’ll come back to Link Tracking Lists when we talk about outreach, but for now, all you need to know is that you can add the desirable competitor links (in our case, links from Isleta and Sandia) to Link Tracking lists straight from Link Intersect, making it easy to manage your data.

Step 7: Find out how to connect with your link prospects

Now it’s time to connect the dots: how do you go from knowing about your competitor’s links to getting those types of links for yourself?

There are three main ways you can get unstructured linked citations to your local business’ website, and those categories are what’s going to dictate the strategy you need to take to secure that opportunity for yourself.

1. Self-created: Self-created links are like voting for yourself, so sites that accept these types of submissions, like Yelp.com, will NoFollow the link to your business' website. Visitors are still referred to your website through that link, but the link doesn't pass authority from Yelp.com to your domain. You should only get authority from a website if they link to you on their own (what Google calls "editorially placed" links). Neither NoFollow nor Follow links are inherently good or bad on their own. They are just intended for different purposes, and it's the misuse of followed links that can get you in trouble with Google. We'll talk more about that in a later section titled “Avoiding the bad fish: Risks of ignoring Google’s link scheme guidelines”
2. Prompted by outreach: In many cases, people won’t know about your content until you tell them. These links are editorially placed by the site owner (not self-created), but the site owner was only made aware of your content because you reached out to them.
3. Organically earned: Sometimes, you get links even without asking for them. If you have a popular piece of content on your site that receives lots of traffic, for example, people may link to that on their own because they find it valuable.

Since this tutorial is about proactively pursuing link opportunities, we’re going to focus on unstructured linked citations types one and two.

Articles

If your competitor has been featured in an article from say a local journalist or blogger, then your outreach will be focused on making a connection with that writer or publication for future link opportunities, rather than getting the exact link your competitor has. That’s because the article has already been written, so it’s unlikely that the writer will go back and edit their story just to add your link.

The one exception to this rule would be if the article links to your competitor, but your competitor’s link is now broken. In this scenario, you could reach out to the writer and say something like, “Hey! I notice in your article [article title] you link to [competitor’s link], but that link doesn’t seem to be working. I have similar content on my website [your URL]. If you find it valuable, please feel free to use it as a replacement for that broken link!”

Sometimes the contact information of the writer will be right next to the article, itself. For example:

If there’s no email address or contact form in the writer’s bio, you can usually find a link to one of their social media accounts, like Twitter, and you can connect with them there via a public or direct message. If you live in a small, tight-knit community, you may even be able to meet with the author in person.

Press releases

If you notice your competitors are issuing a lot of press releases and you want to try that out for yourself, you’ll likely need to sign up for an account, as these are a primarily self-serve platform. Most quality press release sites charge per release, and the price can differ depending on length.

Citations / directories

You’ll either want to sign up for a citation service like Moz Local that distributes your data to these types of listings programmatically, or if you do it manually, you’ll want to find the link to create your listings. Please note that your business may already be on the directory even if you haven’t set up a profile. Before creating a new listing, search for your business name and its variants, your phone number, and current and former addresses to see if there are existing listings you can claim and update.

Business websites

Most businesses will make it easy to contact them. If you’re trying to contact another business for the purpose of proposing teaming up for a co-marketing opportunity, look in their footer (the very bottom of the website). If there’s no contact information there, search for a “Contact Us” or “About” page. You may not find an email address, but you may be able to find a contact form or phone number. Below is an example from Albuquerque Little Theater, where they have contact information on the right and advertising information in the top navigation for businesses that are interested in taking out ads in their printed show programs. Not an unstructured linked citation, but a great way to get your business known to the community!

Organizations

Most organizations will make it easy for those who want to join, unless they are more exclusive or invitation-only. In the event that you do wish to get involved in an invitation-only organization that has no public-facing contact information, try viewing a member list and seeing if there’s anyone you know. Or maybe you know someone who can introduce you to one of the members. Genuine connections are key for this type of organization.

Step 8: Writing a good outreach email (for unstructured linked citations requiring outreach)

Outreach emails are necessary when the link opportunity you’re pursuing isn’t a link you could create yourself, or if the link source is one where you can’t make face-to-face contact with decision-makers. One of the most important questions you should be asking yourself for these opportunities is, “Why would this website link to me?”

Here’s how Bottger might go about sending an outreach email:

Greeting that matches the nature of the outreach target	“Hey Jill!” might be fine when outreaching to the author of a blog, while “Hello Ms. Smith” might be better for more professional outreach.
Introduction	Give a brief summary of who you are, what you do, and your interest in contacting them. For example: “I work with Bottger Mansion, a historic Bed & Breakfast in Old Town Albuquerque. I found your page about Albuquerque activities — you’ve really captured a lot of what Albuquerque has to offer!”
The ask, and the value add	This is where you’ll actually ask for the link. It’s a good idea here to add value. Don’t just ask for something; offer to give something back! To continue the same example: “As long-time residents of Old Town, we’d love to provide you with a comprehensive list of activities in the city’s historic district! We feel an Old Town Activities list would be a great addition to your page. Bottger Mansion regularly hosts high tea, for example, which we’d love to let more people know about with a spot on your list!”
Close	Wish them well, thank them for their time, and sign off. Make sure that it’s easy for them to find information about you by including your full name, title, organization, and website/social links in your email signature.

Don’t be afraid to get on the phone, either! Hearing your voice can add a human element to the outreach attempt and offer a better conversion rate than a more impersonal email (we all get so many of those a day that ones from people we don’t know are easy to ignore).

And remember that local businesses have a particular advantage in accruing unstructured linked citations. Lively participation in the life of your community can continuously introduce you to decision-makers at popular local publications, paving the way towards neighborly outreach on your part. Learn to see the opportunities and think of ways your business can add value to the content that is being written about your town or city.

Step 9: Tracking your wins

Next-to-last, we’re going to jump back to Link Tracking Lists for a second, because that’s going to come in extremely handy here. Remember when we created the list with Sandia and Isleta’s links that we were interested in pursuing? Those will now show up when we go to Moz Pro > Link Explorer > Link Tracking Lists.

Every time Bottger successfully secures a link that they’ve added to their Link Tracking List, the red X in “Links to target URL?” column will turn blue, indicating that the site links to Bottger’s root domain. If we were pursuing links to individual pages, and a link prospect linked to our target page, the red X would turn green.

Another handy feature is the “Notes” dropdown. This allows you to keep track of your outreach attempts, which can be one of the trickiest parts about link building!

Avoiding the bad fish: Some words of caution before you get started

Before starting this process for yourself, familiarize yourself with these four risks so that your fishing trip doesn’t result in a basket of bad catches that could waste your resources or get your website penalized.

1. Risks of a “copy only” strategy

Link Intersect can be amazingly helpful for discovering new, relevant link opportunities for your local business, but link builders beware. If all you ever do is copy your competitors, the most you’ll ever achieve is becoming the second-best version of them. Use this method to keep tabs on strategies your competition is using, and even use it to spark your own creativity, but avoid copying everything your competitors do, and nothing else. Why be the second-best version of your competition when you can be the best version of yourself?

2. Risks of a “blindly follow” strategy

Comparing your site’s backlink profile with your direct competitors’ backlink profiles will return a list of links that they have and you don’t, but don’t use Link Intersect results as an exact checklist of links to pursue. Your competitors might have bad backlinks in their profile. For example, avoid pursuing opportunities from domains with a high Spam Score or low Domain or Page Authority (DA/PA). Learn more about how to evaluate sites by their Spam Score or DA/PA.

They might also have great backlinks that aren’t the right opportunity for your business, and those should be avoided too! Do you remember Isleta and Sandia’s links for events like MMA matches? If Bottger were to blindly take those resorts’ link profiles as directives, they might think they have to host a fight at their B&B, too!

Take what you find with a grain of salt. Evaluate every link opportunity on its own merit, rather than deeming it a good opportunity simply because your competitor has it.

3. Risks of an “apples to oranges” strategy

Choose the domains and pages you want to compare yourself against wisely. As a small local B&B, Bottger wouldn’t want to compare their backlink profile to that of Wikipedia or The New York Times, for example. Those sites are popular, but not relevant in any way to the types of unstructured linked citations Bottger would want to pursue, such as links that are locally relevant or industry-relevant.

In other words, just because a site is popular doesn’t mean it will yield relevant unstructured linked citation opportunities for you. Here in this tutorial, we’ve outlined one potential use-case for Link Intersect: finding unstructured linked citations your local business competitors have. However, this is not the only use for Link Intersect. Instead of comparing your site against competitors or near-competitors, you could compare it against:

• Sites or pages about your locale (ex: sites like https://www.visitalbuquerque.org/ or http://www.albuquerqueoldtown.com/). This could yield locally relevant unstructured linked citation opportunities.
• Sites or pages about your industry (ex: sites like http://www.paii.com/ or http://lodgingmagazine.com/). This could yield industry-relevant unstructured linked citation opportunities.

If you know what types of links you’re trying to find, choosing sites to evaluate against your own should be a lot easier, and yield more relevant opportunities.

4. Risks of ignoring Google’s “link schemes” guidelines

If you’ve never embarked on link building before, we encourage you to read through Google’s quality guidelines for webmasters, specifically its section on “Link schemes.” If you were to distill those link guidelines down into a single principle, it would be: don’t create links for the purpose of manipulating your site’s ranking in Google search. That’s right. Google doesn’t want anyone embarking on any marketing initiatives solely for the purpose of improving their ranking. Google wants links to be the natural byproduct of the quality work you’re doing for your audience. Google can penalize sites that participate in activities such as:

• Buying links that pass PageRank (“followed” links)
• Excessive “you link to me and I’ll link to you” exchanges
• Self-created followed links that weren’t editorially placed by the site owner

This underscores that the activities that are just good business, like being involved in the local community, are also the ones that can produce the links that Google likes. Sites owners might need a little nudge, which is why we’ve included a section on outreach, but that doesn’t mean the links are unnatural. Unstructured linked citations should be a byproduct of the good work local businesses are doing in their communities.

In conclusion

At Moz, we’re strong believers in authenticity, and there is no better pond for building meaningful marketing relationships than the local one. Focusing on unstructured linked citations can be viewed as a prompt to grow your community relationships — with journalists, bloggers, event hosts, business associations, and customers. It’s a chance for a real-world fishing trip that can reel in a basket of publicity for your local brand beyond what money can buy. Your genuine desire to serve and build community will stand you in good stead for the long haul.

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