Seventeen Ways To Improve Your Blog - Case Study

Seventeen Ways To Improve Your Blog - Case Study
http://bit.ly/QBV91q

Posted by evolvingSEO

Can you still succeed at blogging?

Blogging is tough these days. Its a crowded realm with a staggering amount of people in the game. According to Pingdom, by the end of 2011 there were:

  • 70 million WordPress blogs
  • 39 million Tumblr blogs
  • 555 million total websites

SEVENTY MILLION WordPress blogs.

Sure, some of them might be your link networks or small micro-sites - but let's cut that number in half, and you get 35 million. Even that number means for every 100 people in the US, 8 of them blog. That's crazy.

What's left to do but...


source

But... NO! Don't give up! Some writers among us has achieved that success - and you can, too! You just need to know how to go about blogging in today's landscape. 

You COULD be successful with blogging

You could be. But you've got to get it right. (And you may want to continue reading... *cough*) You've got to create the right mix of elements and put in the time, dedication, passion, and effort. But don't let anyone tell you it can't be done.

There are still bloggers, new bloggers, who start from scratch (in the past 12-24 months) and achieve success that looks like this:

all traffic august

Or this:

Yep - that's 90 linking root domains to one single post and 14,900 facebook shares.

In this post, we're going to look at an exciting case study to show you how to improve your chances for success with blogging.

We're going to break it into a few pieces;

Table of Contents - Seventeen Ways to Improve Your Blog

  1. Meet the blogger
  2. Eight past ingredients of success
  3. Three SEO challenges and solutions
  4. Six recommendations to take it to the next level

8 + 3 + 6 = 17 Ways :-)

Let's go!


Meet the blogger behind NoahsDad.com

If you've been hanging around the Moz community long enough, you may have noticed a cute little child commenting on posts or asking questions in Q&A:

screencap of noah's comment on moz blog

Smart kid! Ok, ok... I'm playing around of course. Little Noah hasn't learned to type. That's Rick Smith, aka Noah's Dad.

I first came to know Rick through the Moz community. I then noticed this Q&A Discussion (which by the way is the most thumbed up of all time). In it, Rand suggested he do a case study about noahsdad.com. I know Rand's a busy guy, so I offered to do the case study instead. So, here we are :)

Oh, right, back to Rick...

Besides being a welcome member of the Moz community, Rick has been achieving a special kind of success with his blog noahsdad.com. His son Noah was born with Down Syndrome December 15th, 2010 and Rick has been documenting their journey as a family since May 2011.

There have been some particularly interesting SEO challenges for the blog along the way and with his success, there is always an underlying question: what can Rick do (really, what can ANY blogger do) to take this success further? 


Eight ingredients of success for NoahsDad.com 

In essence, this is a case study for all bloggers who want to grow their blog and achieve more success.

Although Rick is not a professional writer and has only been blogging on noahsdad.com for about 15 months, he's achieved a noteworthy degree of success. They've been featured or mentioned on Time.com, ABC News, The Huffington Post, FOX News, and more. Average monthly visits are now in the 5-digits.

And, how would you like these kinds of metrics for a single post?

What has Rick done so far to achieve this success? What can you do and learn from and apply to your own personal blog?

1. Theme your blog with one concrete topic/have a purpose

I don't think anyone would question what Rick's blog is "about." Its about Noah, Rick's son, who has Down Syndrome. This is concrete. It anchors the purpose and meaning of the blog into something tangible. 

I can think of a good example in the SEO world. Jon Cooper didn't just make an SEO blog, he made a link building blog. Specifics matter. 

Takeaway: How can you hone in on a more concrete topic for your blog? Or, if you're thinking of starting a new blog, how can you focus your topic more?

2. Use Random Affinities

I completely, 100% took that from Ian Laurie's post (as you can see in the link). However, Rick has basically nailed this instinctively. Just about every time he uses a random affinity in a post, it's wildly successful.

For example, look at the post he wrote about a Target advertisement which discretely uses a child with Down Syndrome. According to Open Site Explorer, it received 90 LRDs and 14,900 facebook shares. It got linked to by the Huffington Post, ABC News, and many more quality sites. Rick combined the topic of Down Syndrome, with the department store Target and its advertising message.

By tying together the theme's of Target, Advertising, Special Needs, and Down Syndrome, Rick tapped into a much larger audience.

Takeaway: Read Ian's post :)

3. Create content the media would be likely to cite

Focus on creating a resource that does the job of a reporter to make their lives easier. Reporters are more likely to use your post to explain a facet of what they're reporting on if they can simply point to your article.

That's exactly what this reporter from the Huffington Post did when he linked to an article on noahsdad.com:

Takeaway: Find news articles in your niche. Study the types of resources they are linking to. Analyze what makes them linkable. Create your own content with the traits you find in mind.

4. Be consistent and post daily

Since day one, Rick has been posting content on almost a daily basis. But honestly, the consistency part of this is most important. Look at the success of Whiteboard Friday!

If finding time to write on a regular basis is a challenge for you, make use of the scheduling feature in WordPress or your CMS.

Takeaway: Choose a publishing schedule that is realistic for your schedule and that fits your audience. It might be once a week, everyday, e

Searchlove: Upcoming Conferences and a Free Video

Searchlove: Upcoming Conferences and a Free Video
http://bit.ly/PQIf0f

Posted by willcritchlow

The Distilled Searchlove conferences are coming up in London and Boston in just over a month. These PRO discounts are our deepest ever. The SEOmoz community gives us so much, and we love being able to give a little bit back.

90% of last year’s attendees said they’d attend again, and we've been putting loads of effort into making this year's conference even better. This year's conferences are planned to be the biggest and best yet. It's amazing to me that we can be responsible for great speakers like Richard Baxter getting presentation training (largely because I keep writing posts like this one and raising already-high expectations!).

I think this year’s speaker line-ups and schedules are some of the best we’ve ever put together - here is a small snapshot of what you can look forward to:

A few of the Boston speakers (see full schedule):

Boston Searchlove speakers

And a few more from London (see full schedule)

Searchlove London line-up

If you loved the full-length video of Wil Reynolds speaking at Mozcon and want to see him live, you'll be pleased to know he is speaking in London and Boston.

Mike King’s “Targeting Humans” talk

If you are getting withdrawal symptoms after watching 17 hours of Mozcon videos and want more to keep you going, I've got more great news for you: we're giving away a 45 minute HD video that normally costs $ 70 in our store for free.

Mike burst onto the speaking scene in style last year. He is one of the few people I know who has the guts to start an SEO talk dressed as MC Hammer and pull off a real live Hammer Dance. Add to that one of the highest-rated talks we’ve seen at our conferences, and you have a knockout punch of entertainment and educational value. Did I mention that Mike will be speaking at Boston?

Use the code MOZMIKEFREE to get the video for free:

Mike King - Targeting Humans
 

Here’s how you get the 45-minute-long HD video completely free:

  • Copy the 100% discount code: MOZMIKEFREE
  • Head on over to our video store to get the video to stream or download completely free (no credit card required)

Things I'm looking forward to at Searchlove

I'm so excited to have a load of brilliant new speakers this year. Although some of the speakers are old friends, all of them are new to Searchlove:

Here are a few of the things I'm personally excited to learn from the new additions to our speaker line-ups, along with some links for you to check out in the meantime:

  • If you hang out on Hacker News, you will know Patrick McKenzie by his patio11 handle. I have been subscribed to his training videos by email since it launched, and I know I'm leaving money on the table by not implementing all his ideas. For a sneak preview, I encourage you to read about how he doubled the revenue growth rate of Server Density.
  • Dan Shapiro's amazing recent successes (go and read about how quickly a great faceted navigation can get you acquired) make him the perfect person to talk about manufacturing serendipity. It's amazing how much of an SEO's job these days relies on who you know, so I can't wait to hone my ability to make luck go my way.
  • I know you all know Jen. I'm so pleased she is going to be appearing for us in Boston. This whiteboard Friday on growing the value of your company twitter account is my go-to link for people looking for success in that area.
  • Have you ever seen Ian Lurie speak? Or read one of his posts (read: rants)? I personally like this one on time management. All of this makes me think I will have a lot to learn from his presentation on making better pitches and proposals.
  • Although we get a lot of attendees in London from across Europe (and a few from further afield), we have done relatively little on international SEO. We're remedying that with the multi-lingual Lisa Myers. I want to learn what I don't know from a true European.

Because we're bringing on such an array of new talent, there are many surprises in store. The most exciting unknowns for me include:

  • Justin Briggs (who used to work for Distilled) isn't new to Searchlove - he's rocked Boston for us in the past - but I want to see what he makes of London. We're responsible for him getting his passport...
  • I have no idea what Rand has up his sleeve for the head to head ("inbound marketing on a shoestring") - I have some fun ideas of where I'm going, but I'm looking forward to seeing the direction he will take.

In summary, I want you to come

I want you to come

Wil wants you to come

Wil wants you to come

Stephen wants you to com

New on Mozcast - 5 Real-time Top-view Metrics

New on Mozcast - 5 Real-time Top-view Metrics
http://bit.ly/P3He3X

Posted by Dr. Pete

When we started reporting the Google “weather” on MozCast, we knew that one number could never paint the entire picture of something as complex as the Google algorithm. Over the last few months, we’ve been exploring other ways to look at ranking data from high altitude, and have reported on metrics like domain diversity and EMD influence. Today, I’m happy to announce that we’re rolling out five of these “top-view” metrics on MozCast, updated daily.

From the new “METRICS” page (top menu), you’ll see five tabs:

Domain Diversity, SERP Count, EMD Influence, PMD Influence, Daily Big 10

Each metric defaults to a 30-day view, but you can also see 60-day and 90-day data. Please note that Y-axes all auto-scale to emphasize daily changes, so make sure to note the scale when interpreting this data. I trust you all to be grown-ups and draw your own conclusions.

So, let’s dive right into the five top-view metrics…

(1) Domain Diversity

The domain diversity graph shows the percentage of URLs across the MozCast data set that have unique subdomains. Put more simply, it’s the number of unique subdomains divided by the number of total URLs/rankings. The more diversity, the less SERP “crowding” – here’s a 30-day view:

Domain Diversity Graph (30-day)

Keep in mind that the range over the past 30 days has been pretty narrow (less than 1%), so let’s take a look at the broader, 90-day view:

Domain Diversity Graph (90-day)

You can hover over any data point for dates and more precise percentages. Here, you can see that diversity increased when Google rolled out 7-result SERPs (from about 8/12-8/14), but has gradually declined over the past 90 days. When we started collecting data in early April, domain diversity was closer to 61%, but it dropped significantly after the Penguin update (on 4/24).

On September 14, Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google had made a change to improve SERP diversity:

Matt Cutts tweet

We saw a small bump (about 0.4%) from 9/6 to 9/9, but otherwise have no evidence for major improvements. Please keep in mind that this is one data set and one way of measuring “diversity” – I’m not calling a Matt a liar, and I’d welcome other analyses and points of view. My goal is to create transparency where we currently have very little of it.

(2) SERP Count (“Shrinkage”)

Over a roughly 2-day period in mid-August, Google rolled out 7-result SERPs (for page 1), and our data shows that it impacted roughly 18% of the queries we track. We originally reported this as the number of SERPs with <10 results, but that presented two problems: (1) less results made the graph go up – which is a bit confusing, and (2) that metric doesn’t change if the result count changes. In other words (hat tip to Moz teammate Myron on this one), if all of the 7-result SERPs suddenly changed to 6-result SERPs, our original metric would never show it. So, we’ve replaced that metric with the average result count. Here’s a 60-day view:

Average Result Count (60-day)

In this case, an average drop of 0.5 results is massive, and the graph tells the story pretty well. The 30-day data shows much, much smaller variations, but this metric will help us track any future changes, including a return to 10-result SERPs (if that were to happen).

(3) EMD Influence

The influence of Exact-Match Domains (EMDs) is a hot topic in SEO. Our EMD influence metric shows the percentage of Top 10 rankings that are currently occupied by EMDs. Specifically, if the keyphrase is “buy widgets”, than we consider only “buywidgets.tld” (any TLD) to be an exact match. Here’s the 90-day data:

EMD Influence Graph (90-day)

My recent post goes into more detail and there are a lot of ways to dig into this data, but we’re seeing a slight uptick in EMD influence recently over the past 3 months.

(4) PMD Influence

Similarly, PMD influence measures the influence of Partial-Match Domains on the Top 10. For the keyphrase “buy widgets”, we count any URL with either “buywidgets” or “buy-widgets” in the subdomain as a partial match. This metric does not include EMDs. Here’s the 90-day view:

PMD Influence (90-day)

In line with the broader history reported earlier, PMDs seem to be steadily declining in influence. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that any particular PMD won’t rank (they still hold over 4% of Top 10 rankings) – it just means that their overall impact is trending downward.

(5) Daily Big 10

Finally, we have a new metric I haven’t covered in any previous blog post, the “Big 10.” Apologies to college football fans (I’m a former Hawkeye), but I didn’t want to confuse this with the “Top 10.” The Big 10 influence is the percentage of Top 10 rankings accounted for by the ten most powerful subdomains on any given day. This list changes daily, and any single day’s data represents the influence of the Big 10 for that day. Currently, the Big 10 domains account for about 13.6% of Top 10 rankings in our data set:

Big 10 Graph (90-day)

Below the graph for this metric, we also list the Big 10 subdomains for the most recent day. Like all of the MozCast stats, this list is currently recalculated each morning. Here’s the data from 9/18:

  1. en.wikipedia.org
  2. www.amazon.com
  3. www.youtube.com
  4. www.facebook.com
  5. www.ebay.com
  6. www.walmart.com
  7. www.webmd.com
  8. www.yelp.com
  9. www.overstock.com
  10. allrecipes.com

Currently, the roughly 9,500 URLs in our data set (Top 7-10 for 1,000 keywords) represent about 5,300 unique subdomains, so the fact that just ten of them take up almost 14% of the real estate is pretty amazing. Wikipedia alone holds 4.6% of the Top 10 URLs that we track (today). There’s a fair amount of movement in the bottom couple of domains, and Twitter dropped out of the Top 10 earlier this year.

What Would You Like to See?

There are a lot of ways to slice the data and we have quite a few ideas in the pipe, but if there are specific, large-scale metrics you’re interested in, let me know. We’re trying to incorporate community feedback into the product development plan. Also, feel free to make suggestions on the @mozcast Twitter account.

I’d like to quickly thank Devin and Casey for doing the behind-the-scenes work to get this page integrated, and to Devin in particular for turning my single, rambling page of stats into a pretty slick design. Thanks as usual to Dr. Matt Peters for feedback on the math, and t

How to Prepare for AuthorRank and Get the Jump on Google

How to Prepare for AuthorRank and Get the Jump on Google
http://bit.ly/OKfk1c

Posted by Mike Arnesen

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

What AuthorRank Is

If you're like me and you have your finger on Google’s pulse on a daily basis, you’ve undoubtedly heard of AuthorRank. However, I honestly don’t think it’s received its due attention and if you were AFK for a few days or don’t have the option to be “jacked into the feed”, you may have missed it entirely.

Example of Google AuthorRankOver seven years ago (in August of 2005), Google filed a patent for “Agent Rank” which was later masterfully decoded by Bill Slawski. In the patent, Googler David Minogue references ranking “agents” and using the reception of the content they create and their interactions as a factor in determining their rank. The patent suggests that more well-received and popular “agents” could have their associated content rank higher than unsigned content or the content of other less-authoritative “agents”.

Nothing much happened with Agent Rank after that because the idea of ranking “agents” is dependent on being able to identify them in the first place. No great system for claiming an online identify really existed back then; I wouldn’t call W3C’s XML-signature syntax or other digital signature protocol an ideal solution.

Still, ranking agents remained a goal for Google. In 2011, Eric Schmidt expressed that Google still had a desire and need to identify agents in order to improve search quality, stating “it would be useful if we had strong identity so we could weed (spammers) out.”

Literally the following month (September 2011), Google filed a continuation patent referencing a “portable identity platform” which sounds a whole lot like Google+. Profiles on Google+ make an infinitely easier digital signature system than anything that’s come before and, with the rollout of Google Authorship (tying a Google+ profile to pieces of content), it really sounds like that’s what we’re looking at here.

So now Google can start attributing content to specific “agents” and doing just what they set out to do in 2005: rank them.

As early as February of this year, the term “AuthorRank” started to surface in the industry. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on AuthorRank and speculated that this development could change the search game as we know it. He also stated that it would be “bigger than Panda and Penguin combined”.

AuthorRank, of course, wouldn’t be a replacement for PageRank, but would be used to inform PageRank, therefore enabling Google to rank high-quality content more appropriately. I think AJ’s right on the money and that it’s not a matter of if Google rolls out AuthorRank, but when.

AuthorRank will filter PR-based rankings to provide better results

In Google’s never-ending mission to surface high quality, trustworthy content for their searchers, AuthorRank is really the next big step. After more than seven years, I believe they are just about ready to implement it.

Why You Need to Be Ready

I’m certain that Google is going to begin incorporating AuthorRank into their ranking algorithm in the not-too-distant future. I’d put good money on it. All the signs point to it: Google’s emphasis on social, Google Authorship, their ongoing efforts to measure site trust, and their progressive devaluation of raw links as a ranking factor. People want to read content written by credible and knowledgeable people and using AuthorRank as a major part of their search algorithm just makes sense.

Brace yourselves; AuthorRank is Coming

How Long Do We Have?

That’s what we, as SEOs, want to know, right? How long do we have before we need to start worrying about building our own AuthorRank or working on it for our clients?

Stop thinking like that.

It doesn’t matter when it’s coming because once it does, it’ll be too late. Now I’m not saying that the launch of AuthorRank is going to nuke site traffic like Panda, but the impact will be huge. While the rollout of AuthorRank obviously won’t be an algorithmic penalty, sites that have been prepping and carefully building AuthorRank for their site contributors are going to have a major advantage. It may as well be a penalty against the sites and brands that have done nothing to prepare.

The fact is, we have just as long as it takes Google to effectively measure AuthorRank and decide they can rely on it. That could happen tomorrow or it could happen in two years. We don’t know. So let’s all start working on building AuthorRank today.

We can make a highly-educated guess as to what will determine AuthorRank

What Signals Will Factor Into AuthorRank?

Google considers over 200 ranking factors when determining where our sites rank in organic search, so it’s safe to say that they’ll be using plenty of signals to calculate AuthorRank. Here’s my shortlist of factors that Google is likely to use in their calculation:

  • The average PageRank of an author’s content.
  • The average number of +1s and Google+ shares the author’s content receives.
  • The number of Google+ circles an author is in.
  • Reciprocal connections to other high AuthorRank authors.
  • The number and authority of sites an author’s content has been published to.
  • The engagement level of an author’s native Google+ content (i.e., posts to Google+).
  • The level of on-site engagement for an author’s content (i.e., comments and author’s responses to comments)
  • Outside authority indicators (e.g., the presence of a Wikipedia page).
  • YouTube subscribers and/or engagement on authored videos (speculation: multiple-attribution author markup for YouTube videos coming soon).
  • Any number of importance/authority metrics on social networks that Google deems trustworthy enough (Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, SlideShare, etc.).
  • Real world authority indicators like published works on Google Books or Google Scholar.

How to Start Building Your AuthorRank, Today.

Building your AuthorRank (or consulting with clients to build it) is easy. It’s like Wil Reynolds’s concept of doing #RCS, just for people. Seems logical enough to call it #RPS: Real People $ h!t.

Sweet acronyms aside, what do we actually have to do? Here’s how we start building AuthorRank…

Get Down with Authorship

First of all, you’ll need to set up Google Authorship. Aside from getting that sweet author rich snippet in search results, setting this up will give Google exactly what they need to assign you an initial AuthorRank: a tie between your online identity and the content you’re creating.

Facebook Is Asking Users If Their Friends Are Using Their Real Names

Facebook Is Asking Users If Their Friends Are Using Their Real Names
http://bit.ly/QIUJXe

Facebook doesn’t allow users to use fake names. Sure, people use them all the time, but technically, it’s against Facebook’s terms, and the company appears to have a new strategy in going after those who are in violation (or at least getting a better handle on how much it’s actually going on).

Facebook has been sending out survey questions to people asking whether or not their friends are who they say they are.

“Please help us understand how people are using Facebook,” Facebook says in a dialogue box. “Your response is anonymous and won’t affect your friends’s account. Is this your friend’s real name?”

A Twitter user tweeted out the following screenshot, which was picked up by Talking Points Memo (via TNW):

Facebook snitching

In case there’s any question about the legitimacy of the screenshot, TPM says Facebook has confirmed that it has been surveying users about their friends’ names for the past several months. The publication shares this from a Facebook spokesperson:

“This system has been in a few different incarnations over the past couple months. It changes depending on what’s being asked.”

“Facebook is a community where people connect and share using their real identities,” the company says in its name policy. “When everyone uses their real first and last names, people can know who they’re connecting with. This helps keep our community safe. We take the safety of our community very seriously. That’s why we remove fake accounts from the site as we find them.”

Of course, just because someone is using a fake name does not necessarily mean that the account is fake. Some people simply go by names other than those on their birth certificates. Ask Prince Rogers Nelson or Marshall Bruce Mathers III (who has more likes than anybody on Facebook, granted this is via a Page, not a personal profile).

It’s unclear exactly what Facebook is doing with the information it is collecting.

WebProNews » Social Media

Facebook Launches Strategic PMDs Program

Facebook Launches Strategic PMDs Program
http://bit.ly/Q2ZxsY

At Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, Facebook announced a new designation for “top marketing developers,” called Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer.

“The designation is reserved for a small group of PMDs that are driving outstanding results in the Facebook marketing developer ecosystem and is earned through a rigorous selection process that considers each company’s impact and commitment,” Facebook says. “Strategic PMDs will receive our highest level of support, and will be reevaluated every six months.”

“Agencies and brands looking to take their Facebook marketing to the next level can select a Strategic PMD knowing that they are in the hands of experienced partners that will receive priority product and business support, in-depth training, and access to alpha and beta product trials,” the company adds.

Here’s what the Strategic PMD badge looks like:

Strategic PMDs

These companies have earned the designation: Adobe, AdParlor, Alchemy Social, Brand Networks, Glow, GraphEffect, Kenshoo, Nanigans, Salesforce, SocialCode, Spruce Media and 77Agency.

PMDs will receive the following from Facebook: priority product and business support, access to alpha and beta product trials, improved turn-around times for ads review and tech issues, product planning sessions and co-development of product go-to-market strategy, improved access to the Facebook product and engineering teams, in-depth training on Facebook products, and marketing assets, which Facebook says “will clearly designate the company as a strategic PMD.”

Facebook expects PMDs to actively participate in quarterly product and business planning, co-develop product roadmaps, sales/marketing strategies and KPIs, measure success related to jointly establish KPIs, rapidly adopt new Facebook marketing products, participate in co-marketing opportunities (like case studies and events), and fully comply with PMD program policies.

On a somewhat related note, Salesforce’s Buddy Media announced at Dreamforce that Salesforce Marketing Cloud is integrating Facebook’s new custom audience targeting feature.

WebProNews » Social Media

Facebook Privacy Back In The News For A Few Reasons

Facebook Privacy Back In The News For A Few Reasons
http://bit.ly/OgKb5B

Several pieces of news have come out directly related to Facebook user privacy.

First, the Wall Street Journal’s Liz Heron tweeted that Facebook Manager of Media Partnerships Andy Mitchell said that Facebook is “moving away from passive sharing on Open Graph”. (via BuzzFeed)

Secondly, Reuters reports that a U.S. appeals court will allow the $ 9.5 million Facebook class action settlement related to allegations that its Beacon advertising service violated user privacy. Becaon, launched in 2007, set off a wave of privacy-related complaints, as Facebook shared user activity that people didn’t necessarily want shared.

Finally, Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner has concluded its “re-audit” of Facebook privacy practices, and Facebook has turned off facial recognition in the EU, reports TechCrunch, who shares the full report from the DPC.

Last month, Facebook managed to dodge an FTC fine over privacy, just as Google was getting nailed with one.

WebProNews » Social Media

Predicting Keyword Volume Before Data is in Adwords

Predicting Keyword Volume Before Data is in Adwords
http://bit.ly/S92S5Y

Posted by randfish

Howdy Mozzers!

Being able to get in front of trending keywords can be a valuable but difficult task. Not only does the world of keywords move quickly, the Search Engines are doing their part to change things up so we don't get too comfortable. 

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, we'll be talking about predicting keyword volume - before the data is even in AdWords! We'll show you how to use the resources at your disposal to perform predictive keyword research. This is an advanced technique, so you'll want to make sure you have the basics down.

As always, leave any thoughts, questions, declarations of love, or candy in the comments below!

Video Transcription

"Howdy SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to talk a little bit about keyword research, but predictive keyword research, keyword research that you can do before data even appears inside AdWords or Bing, wherever you are pulling your keyword data from.

It's a big challenging project. It's hard to do. It's hard to execute on. It's certainly what I'd call more of an advanced SEO technique. So, if you haven't got the basics set yet, I'd do those before tackling this. But it can be extremely powerful for two big reasons. Number one, trending keyword volume, keyword volume that happens in big spikes around events or around news items or around topic matter, is very exciting and interesting because it can produce a lot of volume, and it can turn what has been a content marketing strategy into a thought leadership strategy. And second, your competitors don't know about it. They don't know that these things are coming out. Now if you are, you know, political news or in headline type of news areas, yeah, everybody is writing about the same stories. Those things make headlines and they're sort of follow-up. So there's always going to be lots of competition. But in lots of business areas, especially local areas or industry niche areas, there's a lot of news that only gets covered briefly, doesn't get covered particularly well from a keyword targeting standpoint, and therefore you can do it very powerfully and very well.

Let me show you the process here. I'll start with an example actually. SEOmoz, years ago, I think it was 2006, 2005 maybe even, probably '06six, and Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land started writing about social media marketing. I saw this article from him. He was talking about it, about how, with the emergence of Twitter and with Facebook opening up to not just college students, and MySpace was still popular at the time, Digg was still popular at the time, Reddit was still growing in popularity, StumbleUpon was popular. Twitter I think had just started emerging or was just about to emerge. And so he wrote about this topic of social media marketing, and I thought, "Wow. Yeah, that's a really interesting one. I think social media marketing is going to be big." So we're going to do two things. We're going to write a guide to social media marketing, and before I even do that, I am going to write a blog post about social media marketing.

There's no search volume for it at the time. You know, if you went into Google AdWords at the time and you typed in "social media marketing,"
you're not going to see more than, say, 30 to 50 searches a month. It's just not a popular topic yet, but it's about to become one. What happened is I wrote this blog post, and that actually made it to number two in the search results for social media marketing for a long time in Google search results, which sent over the course of a few years - now it was both this article and the larger article that we eventually wrote - that was 20,000 plus visits to the SEOmoz site over about 2 or 3 years.

That's a lot of traffic. That's a lot of new people to capture. And, of course, since we are trying to make tools for SEOs and social media marketers, a little more social media marketers since last November when we released some of that in the Followerwonk acquisition and all that kind of stuff, now we can sort of say, "Wow. You know, this is a great channel for us. This has been a really valuable keyword. I'm really glad we got that thought leadership out there early, before it was even in the keyword tools."

Now, here's the process that you can use to do this repeatedly. So step 1, you've got to be on top of things. You have to be on top of what's happening in your industry, and I suggest three sources, these are unique sources. First off is news, so you could go to, for example, Google news or set up a news alert or those kinds of things. Or if you're in the technology industry, it might be Techmeme. If you're in a specific blogging field, maybe you're going to the Alltop section for that. You want to follow some social sources, who are the leading folks usually on Twitter and Facebook, Google+ can also be useful for this, and seeing what they're talking about and writing about, what's interesting to them.

And then, probably the best one that you can do here is verify that there's actually interest and questions around this by checking out Q&A sites. So, if I see that someone is talking about . . . I'll give a good example. There's a trend to start using the word "growth hacker" to describe marketers in Silicon Valley. So Silicon Valley has historically not particularly liked marketers, and so now they're embracing marketing and the practice of getting actual customers on their startups by calling it growth hacking. That's what they have chosen to call it. That's fine. Now, news sources are writing about this only a tiny bit. Social sources are talking about this a little bit more, and you can see plenty of activity on Q&A sites in the technology field, like on Quora, like on Formspring.

So what does this indicate to you? Well, it says to me, "Hey. This means there's an opportunity there." If I can rank well for growth hacker, get into these things, especially if I could do this, say, six or nine months ago, when the term first started becoming popular, that could be a lead to a lot of great traffic, especially if I'm, for example, let's say like many of you probably, an SEO consultant or an SEO agency or an in-house SEO who's trying to g