Marketing Lessons Learned from 16 Years of Building Moz - Whiteboard Friday

Something every woman should know - WHY MEN LIE!

Posted by randfish

The lessons Rand has learned from building and growing Moz are almost old enough to drive. From marketing flywheels versus growth hacks, to product launch timing, to knowing your audience intimately, Rand shares his best advice from a decade and a half of marketing Moz in today's edition of Whiteboard Friday.

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we are going to chat about some of the big lessons learned for me personally building this company, building Moz over the last 16, 17 years.

Back in February, I left the company full-time. I'm still the Chairman of the Board and contribute in some ways, including an occasional Whiteboard Friday here and there. But what I wanted to do as part of this book that I've written, that's just coming out April 24th, Lost and Founder, is talk about some of the elements in there, maybe even give you a sneak peek.

If you're thinking, "Well, what are the two or three chapters that are super relevant to me?" let me try and walk you through a little bit of what I feel like I've taken away and what I'm going to change going forward, especially stuff that's applicable to those of us in web marketing, in SEO, and in broader marketing.

Marketing flywheels > growth hacks

First off, marketing flywheels, in my experience, almost always beat growth hacks. I know that growth hacks are trendy in the last few years, especially in the startup and technology worlds. There's been this sort of search for the next big growth hack that's going to transform our business. But I've got to be honest with you. Not just here at Moz, but in all of the companies that I've had experience with as a marketer, this tends to be what that looks like when it's implemented.

So folks will find a hack. They'll find some trick that works for a little while, and it results in this type of a spike in their traffic, their conversions, their success metrics of whatever kind. So they've discovered a way to game Facebook or they found this new black hat trick or they found this great conversion device. Whatever it is, it's short term and short lasting. Why is this? It tends to be because of something Andrew Chen calls — and I'll use his euphemism here — it's called the "Law of Shitty Click-through Rates," which essentially says that over time, as people get experienced with a sort of marketing trend, they become immune to its effects.

You can see this in anything that sort of tries to hack at consciousness or take advantage of psychological biases. So you get this pattern of hack, hack, hack, hack, and then none of the hacks you're doing work anymore. Even if you have a tremendously successful one, even if this is six months in length, it tends to be the case that, over time, those diminish and decline.

Conversely, a marketing flywheel is something that you build that generates inertia and energy, such that each effort and piece of energy that you put into it helps it spin faster and faster, and it carries through. It takes less energy to turn it around again and again in the future after you've got it up and spinning. This is how a lot of great marketing works. You build a brand. You build your audience. They come to you. They help it amplify. They bring more and more people back. In the web marketing world, this works really well too.

So most of you are familiar with Moz's flywheel, but I'll try and give it a rough explanation here. We start down here with content ideas that we get from spending lots of time with SEOs. We do keyword research, and we optimize these posts, including look at Whiteboard Friday itself.

What do we do with Whiteboard Friday? You're watching this video, but you'll also see the transcript below. You'll see the podcast version from SoundCloud so that you can listen to the text rather than watch me if you can do audio only for some reason. Each of these little images have been cut out and placed into the text below so that someone who's searching in Google images might find some of these and find their way to Whiteboard Friday. A few months after it goes up here, hosted with Wistia on Moz, it will be put up on YouTube.com so that people can find it there.

So we've done all these sorts of things to optimize these posts. We publish them, and then we earn amplification through all the channels that we have — email, social media, certainly search engines are a big one for us. Then we grow our reach for next time.

Early in the days, early in Moz's history, when I was first publishing, I was writing every blog post myself for many, many years. This was tremendously difficult. We weren't getting much reach. Now, it's an engine that turns on its own. So each time we do it, we earn more SEO ranking ability, more links, more other positive ranking signals. The next time we publish content, it has an even better chance of doing well. So Moz's flywheel keeps spinning, keeps getting faster and faster, and it's easier and easier. Each time I film Whiteboard Friday, I'm a little more experienced. I've gotten a little better at it.

Flywheels come in many different forms

Flywheels come in a lot of forms. It's not just the classic content and SEO one that we're describing here, although I know many of you who watch Whiteboard Friday probably use something similar. But press and PR is a big one that many folks use. I know companies that are built on primarily event marketing, and they have that same flywheel going for them. In advertising, folks have found these, in influencer-focused marketing flywheels, and community and user-generated content to build flywheels. All of these are ways to do that.

Find friction in your flywheels

If and when you find friction in your flywheel, like I did back in my early days, that's when a hack is really helpful. If you can get a hack going to grow reach for next time, for example, in my early days, this was all about doing outreach to folks in the SEO space who were already influential, getting them to pay attention and help amplify Moz's content. That was the hack that I needed. Essentially, it was a combination of the Beginner's Guide to SEO and the Search Ranking Factors document, which I've described here. But that really helped grow reach for next time and made this flywheel start spinning in the way that we wanted. So I would urge you to favor flywheels over hacks.

Marketing an MVP is hard

Second one, marketing an MVP kind of sucks. It's just awful. Great products are rarely minimum viable products. The MVP is a wonderful way to build. I really, really like what Eric Ries has done with that movement, where he's taken this concept of build the smallest possible thing you can that still solves the user's problem, the customer's problem and launch that so that you can learn and iterate from it.

I just have one complaint, which is if you do that publicly, if you launch your MVP publicly and you're already a brand that's well known, you really hurt your reputation. No one ever thinks this. No one ever thinks, "Gosh, you know, Moz launched their first version of new tool X. It's pretty terrible, but I can see how, with a few years of work, it's going to be an amazing product. I really believe in them." No one thinks that way.

What do you think? You think, "Moz launched this product. Why did they launch it? It's kind of terrible. Are they going downhill? Do they suck now? Maybe I should I trust their other tools less." That's how most people think when it comes to an MVP, and that's why it's so dangerous.

So I made this silly chart here. But if the quality goes from crap to best in class and the amplification worthiness goes from zero to viral, it tends to be the case that most MVPs are launching way down here, when they're barely good enough and thus have almost no amplification potential and really can't do much for your marketing other than harm it.

If you instead build it internally, build that MVP internally, test with your beta group, and wait until it gets all the way up to this quality level of, "Wow, that's really good," and lots of people who are using it say, "Gosh, I couldn't live without this. I want to share it with my friends. I want to tell everyone about this. Is it okay to tell people yet?" Maybe it's starting to leak. Now, you're up here. Now, your launch can really do something. We have seen exactly that happen many, many times here at Moz with both MVPs and MVPs where we sat on them and waited. I talk about some of these in the book.

MVPs, great to test internally with a private group. They're also fine if you're really early stage and no one has heard of you. But MVPs can seriously drag down reputation and perception of a brand's quality and equity, which is why I generally recommend against them, especially for marketing.

Living the lives of your customer/audience is a startup + marketing cheat code

Last, but not least, living the lives of your customers or your audience is a cheat code. It is a marketing and startup cheat code. One of the best things that I have ever done is to say, "You know what? I am not going to sequester myself in my office dreaming up this great thing I think we should build or I think that we should do. Instead, I'm going to spend real time with our customers."

So you might remember, at the end of 2013, I did this crazy project with my friend, Wil Reynolds, who runs Seer Interactive. They're an SEO agency based here in the United States, in Philadelphia and San Diego. They do a lot more than SEO. Wil and I traded houses. We traded lives. We traded email accounts. I can't tell you how weird it is answering somebody's email, replying to Wil's mom and being like, "Oh, Mrs. Reynolds, this is actually Rand. Your son, Wil, is answering my email off in Seattle and living in my apartment."

That experience was transformational for me, especially after having gone through the pain of building something that I had conceptualized myself but hadn't validated and hadn't even come up with the idea from real problems that real people were facing. I had come up with it based on what I thought could grow the company. I seriously dislike ideas that come from that perspective now.

So since then, I just try not to assume. I try not to assume that I know what people want. When we film a Whiteboard Friday, it is almost always on a topic that someone I have met and talked to either over email or over Twitter or in person at an event or a conference, we've had a conversation in person. They've said, "I'm struggling with this." I go, "I can make a Whiteboard Friday to help them with that." That's where these content ideas come from.

When I spend time with people doing their job, I was just in San Diego a little while ago meeting with a couple of agencies down there, spending time in their offices showing off a new links tool, getting all their feedback, seeing what they do with Open Site Explorer and Ahrefs and Majestic and doing their work with them, trying to go through the process that they go through and actually experiencing their pain points. I think this right here is the product and marketing cheat code. If you spend time with your audience, experiencing their pain points, the copy you write, what you design, where you place it, who you try and get to influence and amplify it, how you serve them, whether that's through content or through advertising or through events, or whatever kind of marketing you're doing, will improve if you live the lives of your customers and their influencers.

Whatever kind of marketing you're doing will improve if you live the lives of your customers and their influencers.

All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. If you have feedback on this or if you've read the book and checked that out and you liked it or didn't like it, please, I would love to hear from you. I look forward to your comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Enterprise Local SEO is Different: A Checklist, a Mindset

Something every woman should know - WHY MEN LIE!

Posted by MiriamEllis

Image credit: Abraham Williams

If you’re marketing big brands with hundreds or thousands of locations, are you certain you’re getting model-appropriate local SEO information from your favorite industry sources?

Is your enterprise checking off not just technical basics, but hyperlocalized research to strengthen its entrance into new markets?

Before I started working for Moz in in 2010, the bulk of my local SEO experience had been with small-to-medium business models. Naturally, the advice I was able to offer back then was limited by the scope of my work. But then came Moz Local, and the opportunity to learn more about the more complex needs of valued enterprise customers like Crate & Barrel with more than 170 locations, PAPYRUS with 400, or Bridgestone Corporation with 2000+.

Now, when I’m thumbing through industry tips and tactics, I’m better able to identify when a recommended practice is stemming from an SMB mindset and falling short of enterprise realities, or is truly applicable to all business models. My goal for this post is to offer:

• Examples of commonly encountered advice that isn’t really best for big brands
• An Enterprise Local SEO Checklist to help you shape strategy for present campaigns, or ready your agency to pursue relationships with bigger dream clients
• A state-to-enterprise wireframe for initial hyperlocal marketing research

Not everything you read is for enterprises

When a brand is small, like a single location, family-owned retail shop, it’s likely that a single person at the company can manage the business’ Local SEO, with some free education and a few helpful tools. Large, multi-location brands, just by dint of organizational complexities, are different. Before they even get down to the nitty gritty of building citations, enterprises have to solve for:

• Standardizing data across hundreds or thousands of locations
• Franchise relationships that can muddy who controls which data and assets
• Designating staff to actually manage data and execute initiatives, and building bridges between teams that must work in concert to meet goals
• Scaling everything from listings management, to site architecture, to content dev
• Dealing with a hierarchy of reports of bad data from the retail location level up to corporate

I am barely scratching the surface here. In a nutshell, the scale of the organization and the scope of the multi-location brand can turn a task that would be simple for Mom-and-Pop into a major, company-wide challenge. And I think it adds to the challenge when published advice for SMBs isn’t labeled as such. Over the years, three common tips I’ve encountered with questionable or no applicability to enterprises include:

Not-for-enterprises #1: Link all your local business listings to your homepage

This is sometimes offered as a suggestion to boost local rankings, because website home pages typically have more authority than location landing pages do. But in the enterprise scenario, sending a consumer from a listing for his chosen location, to a homepage, and then expecting him to fool around with a menu or a store locator widget to finally reach a landing page for the location he’s already designated that he wanted is not respecting his user experience. It’s wasting his time. I consider this an unnecessary risk of conversions.

Simultaneously, failure to fully utilize location landing pages means that very little can be done to customize the website experience for each community and customer. Directly-linked-to landing pages can provide instant, persuasive proofs of local-ness, in the form of real local reviews, news about local sponsorships and events, special offers, regional product highlights, imagery and so much more that no corporate homepage can ever provide. Consider these statistics:

“According to a new study, when both brand and location-specific pages exist, 85% of all consumer engagement takes place on the local pages (e.g., Facebook Local Pages, local landing pages). A minority of impressions and engagement (15%) happen on national or brand pages.” - Local Search Association

In the large, multi-location scenario, it just isn’t putting the customer first to swap out a hoped-for ranking increase for a considerate, well-planned user experience.

Not-for-enterprises #2: Local business listings are a one-and-done deal

I find this advice particularly concerning. I don’t consider it true even for SMBs, and at the enterprise level, it’s simply false. It’s my guess that this suggestion stems from imagining a single local business. They create their Google My Business listing and build out perhaps 20–50 structured citations with good data. What could go wrong?

For starters, they may have forgotten that their business name was different 10 years ago. Oh, and they did move across town 5 years ago. And this old data is sitting somewhere in a major aggregator like Acxiom, and somehow due to the infamous vagaries of data flow, it ends up on Bing, and a Bing user gets confused and reports to Google that the new address is wrong on the GMB listing … and so on and so on. Between data flow and crowdsourced editing, a set-and-forget approach to local business listings is trouble waiting to happen.

Now multiply this by 1,000 business locations. And throw in that the enterprise opened two new stores yesterday and closed one. And that they just acquired a new chain and have to rebrand all its assets. And there seems to be something the matter with the phone number on 25 listings, because they’re getting agitated complaints at corporate. And they received 500 reviews last week on Google alone that have to be managed, and it seems one of their competitors is leaving them negative reviews. Whoa – there are 700 duplicate listings being reported by Moz Local! And the brand has 250 Google Questions & Answers queries to respond to this week. And someone just uploaded an image of a dumpster to their GMB listing in Santa Fe…

Not only do listings have to be built, they have to be monitored for data degradation, and managed for inevitable business events, responsiveness to consumers, and spam. It’s hard enough for SMBs to pull all of this off, but enterprises ignore this at their peril!

Not-for-enterprises #3: Just do X

Every time a new local search feature or best practice emerges, you’ll find publications saying “just do X” to implement. What I’ve learned from enterprises is that there is no “just” about it.

Case in point: in 2017, Google rolled out Google Posts, and as Joel Headley of healthcare practice growth platform PatientPop explained to me in a recent interview, his company had to quickly develop a solution that would enable thousands of customers to utilize this influential feature across hundreds of thousands of listings. PatientPop managed implementation in an astonishingly short time, but typically, at the enterprise level, each new rollout requires countless steps up and down the ladder. These could include achieving recognition of the new opportunity, approval to pursue it, designation of teams to work on it, possible acquisition of new assets to accomplish goals, implementation at scale, and the groundwork of tracking outcomes so that they can be reported to prove/disprove ROI from the effort.

Where small businesses can be relatively agile if they can find time to man-up to new features and strategies, enterprises can become dangerously bogged down by infrastructure and communications gaps. Even something as simple as hyperlocalizing content to the needs of a given community represents a significant undertaking.

The family-owned local hardware store already knows that the county fair is the biggest annual event in their area, and they’ve already got everything necessary to participate with a booth, run a contest, take photos, sponsor the tractor pull, earn links, and blog about it. For the hardware franchise with 3,000 stores, branch-to-corporate communication of the mere existence of the county fair, let alone gaining permission to market around it, will require multiple touches from the location to C-suites, and back again.

Checklist for enterprise local SEO preparedness

If you’re on the marketing team for an enterprise, or you run an agency and want to begin working with these larger, rewarding clients, you’ll be striving to put a checkmark in every box on the following checklist:

☑ Definition of success

We’ve determined which actions = success for our brand, whether this is increases for in-store traffic, sales, phone calls, bookings, or some other metric. When we see growth in these KPIs, it will affirm for us that our efforts are creating real success.

☑ Designation of roles

We’ve defined who will be responsible for all tasks relating to the local search marketing of our business. We’ve equipped these team members with all necessary permissions, granted access to key documentation, have organized workflows, and have created an environment for documentation of work.

☑ Canonical data

We’ve created a spreadsheet, approved and agreed upon by all major departments, that lists the standardized name, address, phone number, website URL, and hours of operation for each location of the company. Any variant information has been resolved into a single, agreed-upon data set for each location. This sheet has been shared with all stakeholders managing our local business listings, marketing, website and social outreach.

☑ Website optimization

Our keyword research findings are reflected in the tags and text of our website, including image optimization. Complete contact information for each of our locations is easily accessible on the site and is accurate. We’ve implemented proper markup, such as Schema or JSON-LD, to ensure that our data is as clear as possible to search engines.

☑ Website quality

Our website is easy to navigate and provides a good, usable experience for desktop, mobile and tablet users. We understand that the omni-channel search environment includes ambient search in cars, in homes, via voice. Our website doesn’t rely on technologies that exclude search engines or consumers. We’re putting our customer first.

☑ Tracking and analysis

We’ve implemented maximum controls for tracking and analyzing traffic to our website. We’re also ready to track and analyze other forms of marketing, such as clicks stemming from our Google My Business listings traffic being driven to our website by articles on third party sources, and content we’re sharing via social media.

☑ Publishing strategy

Our website features strong basic pages (Home, Contact, About, Testimonials/Reviews, Policy), we’ve built an excellent, optimized page for each of our core products/services and a quality, unique page for each of our locations. We have a clear strategy as to ongoing content publication, in the form of blog posts, white papers, case studies, social outreach, and other forms of content. We have plans for hyperlocalizing content to match regional culture and needs.

☑ Store locator

We’ve implemented a store locator widget to connect our website’s users to the set of location landing pages we’ve built to thoughtfully meet the needs of specific communities. We’ve also created an HTML version of a menu linking to all of these landing pages to ensure search engines can discover and index them.

☑ Local link building

We’re building the authority of our brand via the links we earn from the most authoritative sources. We’re actively seeking intelligent link building opportunities for each of our locations, reflective of our industry, but also of each branch’s unique geography.

☑ Guideline compliance

We’ve assessed that each of the locations our business plans to build local listings for complies with the Guidelines for Representing Your Business on Google. Each location is a genuine physical location (not a virtual office or PO box) and conducts face-to-face business with consumers, either at our locations or at customers’ locations. We’re compliant with Google’s rules for the naming of each location, and, if appropriate, we understand how to handle listing multi-department and multi-practitioner businesses. None of our Google My Business listings is at risk for suspension due to basic guideline violations. We’ve learned how to avoid every possible local SEO pitfall.

☑ Full Google My Business engagement

We’re making maximum use of all available Google My Business features that can assist us in achieving our goals. This could include Google Posts, Questions & Answers, Reviews, Photos, Messaging, Booking, Local Service Ads, and other emerging features.

☑ Local listing development

We’re using software like Moz Local to scale creation of our local listings on the major aggregators (Infogroup, Acxiom, Localeze and Factual) as well as key directories like Superpages and Citysearch. We’re confident that our accurate, consistent data is being distributed to these most important platforms.

☑ Local listing monitoring

We know that local listings aren’t a set-and-forget asset and are taking advantage of the ongoing monitoring SaaS provides, increasing our confidence in the continued accuracy of our data. We’re aware that, if left unmanaged, local business listing data can degrade over time, due to inputs from various, non-authoritative third parties as well as normal data flow across platforms.

☑ In-store strategy

All public-facing staff are equipped with the necessary training to implement our brand’s customer service policy, answer FAQs or escalate them via a clear hierarchy, resolving complaints before they become negative online reviews. We have installed in-store signage or other materials to actively invite consumer complaints in-person, via an after-hours helpline or text message to ensure we are making maximum effort to build and defend our strong reputation.

☑ Review acquisition

We’ve developed a clear strategy for acquiring reviews on an ongoing basis on the review sites we’ve deemed to be most important to our brand. We’re compliant with the guidelines of each platform on which we’re earning reviews. We’re building website-based reviews and testimonials, too.

☑ Review monitoring & response

We’re monitoring all incoming reviews to identify both positive and negative emerging sentiment trends at specific locations and we’re conversant with Net Promoter Score. We’ve created a process for responding with gratitude to positive reviews. We’re defending our reputation and revenue by responding to negative reviews in ways that keep customers who complain instead of losing them, to avoid needless drain of new customer acquisition spend. Our responses are building a positive impression of our brand. We’ve built or acquired solutions to manage reviews at scale.

☑ Local PR

Each location of our brand has been empowered to build a local footprint in the community it serves, customizing outreach to match community culture. We’re exploring sponsorships, scholarships, workshops, conferences, news opportunities, and other forms of participation that will build our brand via online links and social mentions as well as offline WOM marketing. We’re continuously developing cohesive online/offline outreach for maximum impact on brand recognition, rankings, reputation, and revenue.

☑ Social media

We’ve identified the social platforms that are most popular with our consumer base and a best fit for our brand. We’re practicing ongoing social listening to catch and address positive and negative sentiment trends as they arise. We’ve committed to a social mindset based on sharing rather than the hard sell.

☑ Spam-ready

We’re aware that our brand, our listings, and our reviews may be subject to spam, and we know what options are available for reporting it. We’re also prepared to detect when the spammy behaviors of competitors (such as fake addresses, fake negative/positive reviews, or keyword stuffing of listings) are giving them an unfair advantage in our markets, and have a methodology for escalating reports of guideline violations.

☑ Paid media

We’re investing wisely in both on-and-offline paid media and carefully tracking and analyzing the outcomes of online pay-per-click, radio, TV, billboards, and phone sales strategy. We’re exploring new opportunities, as appropriate and as they emerge, like Google Local Service Ads.

☑ Build/buy

When any new functionality (like Google Posts or Google Q&A) needs to be managed at scale, we have a process for determining whether we need to build or acquire new technology. We know we have to weigh the pros/cons of developing in-house or buying ready-made solutions.

☑ Competitive difference-maker

Once you’ve checked off all of the above elements, you’re ready to move forward towards identifying a USP for your brand that no one else in your market has explored. Be it a tool, widget, app, video marketing campaign, newsworthy acquisition, new partnership, or some other asset, this venture will require deep competitive and market research to discover a need that has yet to be filled well by your competitors. If your business can serve this need, it can set your brand apart for years to come.

Free advice, specifically for local enterprises

It’s asserted that customers may forget what you say, but they’ll never forget how you make them feel.

Call me a Californian, but I continue to be amazed by automotive TV spots that show large trucks driving through beautiful creeks (thanks for tearing up precious riparian habitat during our state-wide drought) and across pristine arctic snowfields (instantly reminding me of climate change). Meanwhile, my family have become Tesla-spotters, seeing that “zero emissions” messaging on the tail of every luxury eco-vehicle that passes us by. As consumers, we know how we feel.

Technical and organizational considerations aside, this is where I see one of the greatest risks posed to the local enterprise structure. Insensitivity at a regional or hyperlocal level -- the failure to research customer needs with the intention of meeting them — has been responsible for some of the most startling bad news for enterprises in recent recall. From ignored negative reviews across fast food franchises, to the downsizing of multiple apparel retailers who have been unable to stake a clear claim in the shifting shopping environment, brands that aren’t successful at generating positive consumer “feelings” may need to reevaluate not just their local search marketing mindset, but their basic identity.

If this sounds uncomfortable or risky, consider that we are seeing a rising trend in CEOs taking stands on issues of national import in America. This is about feelings. Consumers are coming to expect this, and it feeds down to the local level.

Hyperlocalized market research

If your brand is considering opening a new branch in a new state or city, you’ll be creating profiles as part of your research. These could be based on everything from reading local news to conducting formal surveys. If I were to do something like this for my part of California, these are the factors I’d be highlighting about the region:

California	Enterprises
We’ve been blasted by drought and wildfire. In 2017, alone, we went through 9,133 fires. On a positive note, Indigenous thought-leadership is beginning to be re-implemented in some areas to solve our worst ecological problems (water scarcity, salmon loss, absence of traditional forestry practices).	Can your brand help conserve water, re-house thousands of homeless residents, fund mental health services despite budget cuts, make legal services affordable, provide solutions for increased future safety? What are your green practices? Are you helping to forward ecological recovery efforts at a tribal, city or state level?
We’re grumbling more loudly about tech gentrification. If you live in Mississippi, sit down for this. The average home price in your state is $199,028. In my part of California, it’s $825,000. In San Francisco, specifically, you’ll need $1.2 million dollars to buy a tiny studio apartment... if you can find one. While causes are complex, people I talk with generally blame Silicon Valley.	Can your brand be part of this conversation? If not, you’re not really addressing what is on statewide consumers’ minds. Particularly if you’re marketing a tech-oriented company, taking the housing crisis seriously and coming up with solutions for even a modest amount of relief would certainly be positive and newsworthy.
We’ve turned to online shopping for an interesting variety of reasons. And it’s not just because we’re techie hipsters. The retail inventory in big cities (San Francisco) can be overwhelming to sort through, and in small towns (Cloverdale), the shopping options are too few to meet our basic and luxury desires.	Can your brand thrive in the gaps? If you’re located in a metro area, you may need to offer personal assistance to help consumers filter through options. If you’ve got a location somewhere near small towns, strategies like same-day delivery could help you remain competitive.
We’ve got our Hispanic/Latino identity back. Our architecture, city and street names are daily reminders that California has a lot more to do with Mexico than it ever did with the Mayflower. We may have become part of the U.S. in 1850, but pay more attention to 2014 — the year that our Hispanic/Latino community became the state’s largest ethnic group. This is one of the most vibrant happenings here. At the same time, our governor has declared us a sanctuary state for immigrants, and we’re being sued for it by the Justice Department.	Can your brand celebrate our state’s diversity? If you’re doing business in California today, you’ll need bilingual marketing, staff, and in-store amenities. Pew Research publishes ongoing data about the Hispanic/Latino segment of our population. What is your brand doing to ensure that these customers feel truly served?
We’re politically diverse. Our single state is roughly the same size as Sweden, and we truly do run the political gamut from A–Z here. Are citizens removing a man-made dam heroically restoring ecology or getting in the way of commerce? You’ll find voices on every side.	Can your brand take the risk of publicizing its honest core values? If so, you are guaranteed to win and lose Californian customers, so do your research and be prepared to own your stance. Know that at a regional level, communities differ greatly. Those TV ads that show trucks running roughshod through fragile ecosystems may fly in some cities and be viewed with extreme distaste in others.
Money is top of mind. More than ⅓ of Californians have zero savings. Over½ of the citizens have less than $1000 in savings. We invest more in Welfare than the next two states combined. And while our state has the highest proportion of resident billionaires, they are vastly outnumbered by citizens who are continuously anxious about struggling to get by. Purchasing decisions are seldom easy.	Can your brand employ a significant number of residents and pay them a living wage? Could your entry into a new market lift poverty in a town and provide better financial security? This would be newsworthy! Have ideas for lowering prices? You’ll get some attention there, too.

Obviously, I’m painting with broad strokes here, just touching on some of the key points that your enterprise would need to consider in determining to commence operations in any city or state. Why does this matter? Because the hyperlocalization of marketing is on the rise, and to engage with a community, you must first understand it.

Every month, I see businesses shutter because someone failed to apprehend true local demand. Did that bank pick a good location for a new branch? Yes — the next branch is on the other side of the city. Will the new location of the taco franchise remain open? No — it’s already sitting empty while the beloved taco wagon down the street has a line that spills out of its parking lot all night long.

Summing up

"What helps people, helps business." - Leo Burnett

The checklist in this post can help you create an enterprise-appropriate strategy for well-organized local search marketing, and it’s my hope that you’ll evaluate all SEO advice for its fitness to your model. These are the basic necessities. But where you go from there is the exciting part. The creative solutions you find to meet the specific wants and needs of individualized service communities could spell out the longevity of your brand’s success.

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Womply Launches Womply Boost to Help Small Businesses Attract More Customers From Local Internet Searches

Something every woman should know - WHY MEN LIE!

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PRESS RELEASE: Cloud-based software platform empowers business owners to take control of their online business reputation on popular sites like Yelp, Google My Business, Facebook, and TripAdvisor. SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–April 10, 2018– Womply, the leader in front office software for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs)…Read More

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Get Web Traffic Without Relying on Google – or Spending a Dime

Something every woman should know - WHY MEN LIE!

As of this month, Google had almost 75% of the search engine market share, which means that far more people are looking for information on Google than on any other search engine.

So, if you have a new website, you should be putting most of your energy into ranking on Google, right?

Well, let’s look at it this way:

If you were traveling from the East Coast to the West Coast, would you only take a single road?

What would you do if there was construction? Or, what if someone built a newer, better, and more direct highway?

Would you insist on staying on the same route?

I bet you wouldn’t.

You’d be willing to switch to a different route, and then maybe you would switch to another one later. You’d keep taking different routes until you finally arrived at your destination.

There’s no question that Google is a great road to take. It’s wide, it’s clear, and it’s direct.

And if you use AdWords, it’s a little like taking a superhighway to your destination – a superhighway with a lot of tolls.

The problem is that Google makes changes to that highway all the time by changing its algorithms (an estimated 500-600 times a year).

Sometimes, those changes can leave you stranded on the side of the road (think Panda 4.1 in 2014).

You may have spent a lot of money on that trip.

If you put all your eggs in the Google basket, you could easily end up with no eggs and an empty wallet.

So, you shouldn’t put all or most of your energy into chasing Google and AdWords when you have a new website.

But how do you get website traffic without relying on Google? Believe it or not, it’s possible.

And you can even do it for free.

I’m going to tell you how.

You can’t ignore Facebook

You might have heard that Facebook organic reach is dead or users are fleeing from Facebook.

But don’t worry. Even if new Facebook sign-ups have leveled off or user numbers are going down, Facebook still has 1.8 billion monthly users worldwide.

That’s a lot of people.

Even if Facebook loses a couple of million users, it still has a lot of people.

So, if it makes sense for your business to be on Facebook, be there. But be there for more than just the socializing.

Use Facebook and other social media networks as hubs that you can link to your website from.

From Facebook, you can link to a blog, e-book, consultation offer, or somewhere else on your site.

Facebook lists your website right there for everyone to see. And when someone clicks on a post, it takes them directly there.

It’s true: Facebook’s organic reach is down. But it certainly isn’t gone.

Look at it this way: If you have 1,000 followers and a mere 2% of them see your posts, that’s still 20 people. 20 people may not sound like a lot, but any one of them could still buy from you.

The important thing is to remember the social part of social media.

Treat your page followers like you would treat people if you were networking IRL: Respond to concerns, answer questions, and engage on a regular basis.

For example, look at this example from MailChimp:

People like working with people they like.

A good place to start that relationship is on social media.

SlideShare is a hidden gem

SlideShare is an information-sharing site that LinkedIn owns. Think of it as PowerPoint with a purpose.

The content on the site comprises some 18 million uploads of slide presentations and infographics in 40 content categories.

You can find information about anything that anyone could ever want to know on SlideShare in the format of a PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote, or OpenDocument presentations. And when you make a presentation, you can make it public or private.

Some 80% of SlideShare’s 80 million visitors come through organic search. That’s proof that it can be a useful tool for driving traffic to your website.

The great thing about SlideShare is that you can use your existing content to create killer presentations.

You can take an old blog, update it, and format it for a slideshow. Or, you can break down an e-book you’ve published and create a new presentation.

Search Engine Journal uploads their webinar presentations to SlideShare.

If you’ve recently given a presentation at a conference, upload it to SlideShare and give the content a second life.

Matthew Darby from HubSpot does this, too.

The results might surprise you.

Traffic Generation Café’s Ana Hoffman chronicled how she got 200,000 views, 400 new Facebook fans, and 1,400 clicks to her website by publishing nine presentations over 30 days.

SlideShare, she says, is now her second-largest referral traffic source.

Only 19% of B2B marketers use SlideShare, which presents a big opportunity for you to make use of the network before everyone else is using it.

You must be a LinkedIn member to use SlideShare. If you’re not a member now, you definitely should be. Start by signing up for a free account.

Once you’re a LinkedIn member, you can use SlideShare.

Now, you can upload your own presentations.

Once you’ve uploaded a presentation, be sure to share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, your blog, and everywhere else.

SlideShare includes analytics, so you can look at your stats and see which decks get the best results.

LinkedIn publishing will get you noticed

You know LinkedIn as a valuable business network. But did you know that, by using the publishing tool on LinkedIn, you can drive more traffic to your website?

You’ve probably seen the influencer posts on your LinkedIn feed, but the people like Richard Branson aren’t the only ones who can publish on LinkedIn to get noticed. You can, too.

A lot of people publish on LinkedIn, so it can be hard to get noticed. The key is to post valuable, relevant content.

If people like what you have to say, they’ll want more. That will drive traffic to your website.

Remember: You’re not trying to sell something or promote yourself. You’re trying to provide useful information that will help someone solve a problem.

If you’ve ever posted on a blog, publishing to LinkedIn is pretty intuitive.

Even if you’re publishing for the first time, the process is straightforward.

There’s a space right at the top of your feed where you can post something to your newsfeed.

Or you can choose to write an article.

The interface is simple. There’s a space for a header image and an area where you can start writing.

There are a few important things you’ll want to remember. Write an attractive and enticing headline, include images, and use h1 and h2 heads like you would on a blog.

Just take a look at some of LinkedIn’s key influencers like Bill Gates.

Larry Kim is also a great example.

Follow in the footsteps of influencers like these to gain a following with LinkedIn.

Join the conversation in Facebook groups

Relevant groups on Facebook give you a chance to contribute to conversations in your area of expertise.

Think of it as networking online.

Do it naturally like you would at a dinner party: politely join in when you have something relevant to add.

Don’t talk only about yourself and don’t try to sell.

Groups are for people with similar interests who want to share ideas and information.

Genuinely engaging in this way will give you more visibility. You’ll build relationships and drive traffic to your website.

If you’re going to engage with groups, follow the rules of polite discussion: Be kind, don’t be disagreeable, and use common sense before hitting “send.”

You can find Facebook groups on your Facebook page by clicking on the down arrow in the upper right-hand corner.

You’ll find several categories where you can start your search:

Browse the categories, and then click on a category you like to get some suggestions.

Choose a group and click “+ Join.”

Some groups will allow you to simply click to join. Others may ask you some questions before allowing you to join.

There are public and closed groups.

Snapchat News and Education is a public group for people to learn and share tips about Snapchat. Vincent Orleck, the social media director at AtticSalt, created it and runs it.

But people share more than just Snapchat tips. They also discuss Snapchat-related issues and marketing.

This is an example of a place where you could lend your expertise.

Be sure the groups you choose are the ones that are relevant to you before you ask to join. And be sure to read the group’s rules.

LinkedIn groups attract industry professionals

With more than 500 million users and 9 billion content impressions on LinkedIn feeds every week, LinkedIn packs a lot of power.

And LinkedIn users are there for one reason: business.

LinkedIn groups are an ideal place for you to keep up with relevant information in your industry, share information, network, and build brand awareness.

To find LinkedIn groups, go to your homepage, click on the grid in the upper right-hand corner, and then select “Groups.”

You can either search for a specific group in the search bar or click on “Discover” for recommendations from LinkedIn.

Social Media Marketing is one of the largest social media marketing groups on LinkedIn with over 1,800,000 members.

It’s a forum for advertising and marketing professionals who are actively engaged in social media.

By posting to a group or adding to the conversation, you can build brand awareness and increase traffic to your website.

Again, engage in relevant conversation and don’t spam with promotion.

And, once again, be sure to read the rules.

Twitter chats drive traffic

Go to Google and search for “Twitter chats [the category you are interested in]” and find lists of relevant chats.

You can find chats for marketers that meet almost every day of the week, so there’s bound to be one that fits your schedule.

The chat #sproutchat meets on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. CST.

How does paid social play into your social strategy? Join #SproutChat TODAY at 2pm CT to talk with special guest @AmeliaTran about paid social basics. pic.twitter.com/3xGH6OOywL

— SproutChat (@SproutChat) April 4, 2018

Generally, users ask questions one at a time (Q1, Q2, Q3, and so forth). After each question, visitors respond.

You can join in and answer, too. You may also be able to pick up some useful tips or just have a little fun.

You can also use free tools like TweetChat and Twubs. They’ll help organize your chats, slow down the feed, and automatically add the hashtag to your reply.

Believe me: that last one is really helpful. Twitter chats can move fast, and it’s easy to forget to include the hashtag when you respond.

By automatically including the hashtag, you ensure that your responses stay and that other users can see it in the chat stream.

That way, if people like what you have to say or want to learn more, they’ll look at your profile and go to your website. Of course, you want to make sure that you have your website URL in your profile so that users can easily navigate to your site.

Get traffic with knowledge through Quora

Quora is a social Q&A website with more than 190 million monthly users. On Alexa, it ranks 128th in the world and 67th in the U.S.

People ask questions, and other people provide answers. That’s it!

There are hundreds of thousands of topics on Quora, so you’re sure to find something in your wheelhouse.

To join, you can use your Google account or your Facebook account. Or, you can create a login using your email and a password.

Quora will ask you for topics you want to follow and areas in which you have expertise, but you can fill that out later if you want. Pick at least ten topics.

By participating on Quora and providing useful answers to users’ questions, you can drive referral traffic – traffic that comes to your website from another site.

The more referral sources you have, the more you’ll drive a steady stream of traffic to your website.

These are visitors who specifically go to your site because they want to learn what you have to say.

That’s the best kind of traffic there is.

Give help, get traffic on HARO

HARO is shorthand for Help a Reporter Out. It’s a service that journalists use to crowdsource information for news articles.

According to the HARO site, there are 50,000 journalist queries each year. The service reaches some 800,000 sources and 55,00 journalists and bloggers.

The premise is simple: a journalist needs information for an article and reaches out to find experts in the field who can provide information (and get free media coverage).

These journalists work for some major news outlets like Time, the New York Times, Mashable, and Reuters. It’s pretty sweet to get coverage from those outlets.

The service is free for sources. You simply register, monitor, and pitch.

There’s an option to sign up for free, but you can also pay for subscriptions that have more bells and whistles.

Make the most of your email

Most of us use email as our main mode of business communication. If you’re like me, you’re receiving, sending, deleting, and responding to email all day long.

Think of all the emails you send. Are you wasting the valuable real estate at the bottom of the screen?

All you have to do is add the URL to your website (with a link) below your name, and voila! You’re promoting your website and driving traffic there.

Or, you can promote a blog post that will drive traffic to your site.

It couldn’t be any easier for people to find your site. All they have to do is click.

The average number of emails one person sends for business each day is 40.

If you have ten people in your office, and they all include the company website in their signatures, you’ll be promoting your website 400 times each day.

And you’re doing it for free!

But that’s not the only way to put your email signature to good use. I offer some other suggestions:

If you use Outlook and need help adding a link to your website in your email signature, check out this guide. For Gmail, go here.

Blog longer and less frequently

To blog or not to blog? That’s the question in 2018 as content reaches a saturation point and it’s harder to set yourself apart from the pack when it comes to content.

“Harder” doesn’t mean “impossible,” however. You can still effectively use a blog to drive traffic to your website.

I know what you’re thinking:

“Isn’t blogging all about SEO and driving traffic from organic searches?”

It’s true: A huge benefit of blogging is that you’ll drive more traffic from the SERPs. But that’s not the only way that blogging can bring visitors to your site.

In addition to improving SEO, long-form blog content also results in more social media shares and greater visibility for your company.

If you want to thrive on social media, you need to give users something worth sharing.

You can’t expect users to keep sharing your short tweets, status updates, and pictures of your company and employees.

That’s all great as supplemental content. But what users really want to share is high-quality content that’s genuinely useful.

So here’s the takeaway: write and post quality blogs that provide value. You have to help readers solve a problem, educate them, or entertain them.

Publish longer posts, but publish less frequently. Rather than three or four so-so posts a week, write and post one detailed, quality post that’s 1,500 to 3,000 words in length.

In its annual blogger survey, Orbit Media discovered that there was a direct correlation between longer posts and bloggers reporting “strong results.”

So, take the time to do the research and put out blogs that are chock-full of useful and compelling information.

By publishing only when you have something substantial to say, you’re like the person who never raises their voice: When they finally do yell, everyone notices.

Just make sure that your blogs are attractive, reader-friendly, and have lots of images. Users love visual content like pictures, graphics, and videos.

Be sure to include recent (and accurate!) data to support your topic.

And, for goodness sake, make sure your spelling and grammar are spot-on. You don’t want to lose a reader for good because of poor mechanics and sloppy writing.

Try guest blogging

It may sound counter-intuitive, but spending your precious time writing a blog for another site – and for free – really can pay off.

The biggest benefit is that you can include links on a guest blog and drive traffic to your website.

And if you can drive traffic to a specific landing page where you gather valuable email information from visitors, then you can capture leads and add them to your subscriber base.

Then, you can use good, old-fashioned email marketing to drive more business.

If you do it right, guest blogging can be a powerful way to position you as an expert and earn your site valuable backlinks.

You should only guest blog on quality sites, and you should make sure that your guest posts are detailed, actionable, and engaging.

Don’t guest blog just for the sake of guest blogging.

Be strategic about who you associate yourself with. You’re aiming for authority and reputation, not volume.

And it’s not a matter of asking every blogger you find if you can write a guest post for them. You need to look for guest blogging opportunities, which can take some time.

Keep in mind that it’s easier to get other bloggers to accept a post from you if you provide them a little taste up front.

So find the best opportunities, focus on the right topics, and write amazing copy that provides value for readers.

Readers aren’t going to follow a link to your site – and ultimately part with their email information – unless you give them something they like or need.

And that means providing long-form, helpful, valuable content.

Just because you’re writing for someone else, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take as much care with what you write as you would on your own site.

Play nice with others, and they’ll play nice with you.

Offer a webinar to drive traffic

Too often, business people forget that they have something other people don’t have: knowledge about their own industry or niche.

You might take it for granted, but other people don’t.

Consider holding a webinar. You can help others out by sharing some of your knowledge while driving more traffic to your website.

Webinars drive web traffic in several ways.

First, by promoting the webinar, you’ll draw people to your website even if they don’t sign up.

You’ll draw people back to your website – and attract some new viewers – when you post the webinar recording to your website and promote it on social media.

You can turn the webinar into a SlideShare presentation and get even more traffic from people who go to your site after viewing the SlideShare.

And, if you’ve done a good job, attendees will tell other people about their experience, and you’ll get more traffic from word of mouth.

According to ConvertKit, the numbers are compelling.

Let’s look at that by the numbers:

That’s not bad for an hour of your time.

If you have the right topic and target the right people, your product will provide the solution to a problem they have.

Why not give them what they need while driving traffic to your site and making money at the same time?

Of course, webinars aren’t seat-of-your-pants, off-the-cuff affairs.

Webinars require planning, practice, and lots of promotion.

You’ll have to promote your webinar like crazy. It’s harder to do without paid ads, but there are ways to do it.

You can tell your subscribers about it with an email blast. But be sure to include personalization, and be warm and friendly so the recipient feels like it’s a private invitation.

Post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other appropriate networks you use and include a link that goes to a sign-up page.

Let any groups you belong to know about it if it’s relevant to them and if you’ve already built relationships. But don’t go in cold.

Yes, it will take a lot of time and effort. But the time and effort are well worth it when you consider the possibility of new business, visibility, and, of course, web traffic.

Want more tips from me? I give 7 of them in this video:

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that Google is a big player when it comes to generating web traffic and that AdWords can help you get where you want to go – fast.

But not everyone who is just starting out can afford to go all in on AdWords.

Algorithm changes sometimes have effects on website traffic that should prevent you from spending all of your time and resources chasing Google rankings.

I’ve given you more than ten tactics that will help you drive traffic to your new website without relying on Google. And the best thing is that all of the tactics I’ve shared with you are completely free.

Follow them, and your website visits will steadily increase. You’ll be well on the way to making your brand visible and attracting leads.

What other ways have you found to generate web traffic without Google?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

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