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a thanks to the moz creators for creating this awesome tool which helped us understand our mistakes in Seo and link building stratergies. wpking.in

I always find these discussions interesting mainly because of the "nobody knows" factor. What I want to point out more than any one particular thing is that there are a limited number of 'ranking factors.' Whether that number is 200, 50, 3, or 3000, it's limited. Whenever one tactic loses its effectiveness simple math says that other factors increased in importance. Google is very, very good at messing with SEOs. If keyword density is limited or removed, something took its place. Something that isn't "create quality content."  Most serious competitors are creating high quality, relevant content. If you think the difference in ranking one bank over another is "quality content" on a target page for "home loan" you're lying to yourself. Backlinks, age of the page, age of the site, internal links, anchor text, and some level of "keyword density" (though I think it's much more sophisticated than that" definitely helps. H1s still matter, as do H2s and H3s, tbh. I have competitive keywords ranking with NO on-page content AND no backlinks. The page literally has a title, H1 tag and the surrounding menus & sidebars. It ranks for gambling-related keyphrases in a supposedly hard to rank niche and has ranked for months (with zero on-page text.) SEMRush shows that same site rank for over 1200 keyphrases. It has ONE backlink to the homepage. That's it. I wish that was the only example. But I am ranking semi-competitive marketing & SEO related keyphrases on a site with about 8 links and virtually no content. If content + links = SEO, these would never rank. So again, it's beyond that. Age of the domain? No, one is brand new. One is older. One is registered for more than a year, one for less. One is an EMD, one is not. We've had new clients struggle & struggle to rank for really easy keyphrases with no backlink spam, technical on-site looks good and titles/content/links are all in line with other (ranking) clients. We put all their content on a new domain & it ranks just fine. NO links. SEO is just weird. Let's face it - we're all attempting to do the best we can for clients but at the end of the day, none of it truly makes that much sense.

Lessons: Sometimes you need more than 1 landing page even if it's for 1 service and even if you only serve 1 neighborhood. Why? If you know your target audience and it's mixed it will be more likely to convert with more personal landing page rather than a general message for all of them. Don't be afraid to use different CTAs and more than 2 times. Again, it might vary, but if your page is well designed and has some good flow you can use CTAs (I had "pre-conversion" CTA to get emails and also conversion CTA). For some people it's enough to read about your brand and they will convert, for others - it's important to know how you do it - then they convert/pre-convert. Having CTA in front of their nose helps, but of course don't overdo it. Mobile first. Always. 60-90% of all conversions came from mobile. CTR is higher, and CPC is lower. I don't know why, but it happened many times with different local businesses.

Yes! I have tested them in this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ip03xNfpwg CTR was 6.36% and closes are 9.09%. I know that they're not "best-of-best" annotations, but definitely helps. But video is strange because have long intro and one of note is for jump inside of video where action begins. I'm trying to implement also "cards" in YouTube videos to see their performance too.

I don't think there is a one-size-fits all recommendation to make here, which is why that post has so much detail about how to do the research necessary to determine what the best route is for your business. I agree that improving content is better than simply noindexing it, but I also think noindexing it is better than leaving it up long-term unimproved. And the reality is many businesses with tens-of-thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of product pages, and most blogs with thousands of posts, aren't going to be able to economically scale rewriting all of it. The best solution for them, in my opinion, is to get rid of the pages that are dragging them down - at least get them out of the index. They can always be reintroduced once they're improved.

This is something we've always done to some extent and we've been putting more of a focus on in the last few months, along with general UX. A part of our sales process these days is about gathering information on the structure of a company, their brand and "voice" and what it is they're looking to achieve from the business ideally. With that information, we can make sure our content and overall UX is on point with the rest of the company so it fits nicely. Our aim is to either integrate with or act as their marketing department and have everything look like a single, congruent package. The last thing we want is for client websites to feel awkwardly out of place with the rest of the user experience.

For me, I've always had something "on the side" of my marketing/agency life. I want to have personal experience with ecommerce. How does it feel to sell clothing online? What are the concerns? How can I help clients? What are the hiccups with certain sources of traffic (Stumble, Reddit, Pinterest, even Digg back in the day). When does that traffic help? I like to always have at least a couple side projects so I can keep a bit of "skin in the game."  If I'm spending MY money on Adwords, I get better at it. If I'm spending MY time building a site or generating links, I find ways to maximise the resources I have. If you don't have your own site, maybe split/share one with someone. Just a simple side project and always have at least a little stake in the outcomes. That goes back to how I learned - I learned marketing by owning a business. I learned SEO by ranking #1 for my own keyword. I learned Adwords after wasting thousands & thousands of dollars. I learned CRO after wasting thousands & thousands of website hits. Make it PERSONAL somehow.

Matt, For me, it's a three-pronged approach: The content ideation, creation and amplification process are all very important parts of the content marketing process. Without one, the other two are not very effective. For Ideation, I like to focus on what it is I'm trying to accomplish (e.g,., the goal), then marry that with the needs of the audience. For content creation, the goal is to discern the best medium by which to share and create the content, based on the goal of the content and the ideas being expressed. For example, a post that's designed to build a conversation around an idea I hope to test might include light text and heavy graphics and be shared on Google Plus and Instagram, in addition to my blog. The amplification part of the process is the most important, and for good reason: Content that isn't amplified is unlikely to get engagement, shares or links. That's why I like to say, "If it's not important enough to drive engagement, don't create it." Links are anything but a given, but shares and engagement are a clear signal that your work is finding and touching the right audience. Where I veer off course a bit - and recommend that others do the same - is in thinking about amplification first, which is an idea Rand has shared for years. Instead of thinking (ideation) about what content I should create (creation), I focus on who'll promote the content first. That way, I'm creating content that's more likely to be shared and engaged with. I'm convinced others could/would find success by doing the same thing. RS

Thank you for this very helpful response, Matt!

Loved the conference, by far the best conference I have attended, looking forward to 2016 all ready

I am glad I bought my ticket last year. Been to quite a few conferences including: BrightonSEO SearchLove SMXAdvance But I have been told this is one of the best in the world. I was told If Carlsberg did SEO Conference, then they would just copy urs.

Thanks for the feedback Matt - definitely something we're looking into as we work on the next iteration of the tool. I think going up in report limits is something we can certainly do for the higher tiers in the future.

Thanks for sharing Matt.. It's indeed a fantastic initiative by Moz to educate customers like me.