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Have to confess: Track, Test, Tweak, Repeat is legit. Similar to my Refine, Revise, Repeat for content creation and amplification. So often we hear that something or another didn't work, when in reality the brand or the individual either didn't optimize the experience for the desired outcome, didn't have clear, defined goals in place or lacked the ability to track the effort's performance. What I love about email is it's easy to track. From there, it's all about the TTR RS

Hi Ronell! First, I want to say that I love this topic and your blog post was extremely insightful. Featured snippets were a hot topic at SMX this year, I have been mesmerized by them ever since. I do think they definitely play a vital role in a company's SEO efforts! Currently, we haven't made it a huge priority to get our content featured within one of the answer boxes, but I have a feeling that this will be changing in the coming months as featured snippets become more and more popular. By focusing on getting featured in these snippets, you're essentially snagging the #0 rank on a SERP—which is obviously where any company would want to be! Thanks for the reminder that this should be a priority!

We track 35 sites carefully and we are yet to find any evidence that we can attribute to the penguin update. We have asked around and have not yet come across anyone who has been impacted. We are keen to hear from anyone with a clear and obvious impact.

I've used URL profiler to for a content audit on our own site. It helped us to identify the areas of our site that needed to get cleaned up, and more importantly, which pages had thin content. It was also helpful when trying to prioritize which sections to do first. Craig's article highlights another useful way to utilize the tool, looking forward to trying it out.

Data is the cinnamon of content marketing. It enhances your dish with a nice cinnamon flavor, but you probably don't want a big heaping spoonful of uncut cinnamon or the next thing you know you've launched a viral video meme. Or something like that. A story without data maybe is a nice story, but it's also toothless. The internet is littered with baseless opinions and we don't really need more of that. You can make an opinion insightful, however, when you back it up with facts, sources, numbers. Prove a product works laying out a success by the numbers. I want to see stories that know when to lean into the data, the kind of story that chews your face off and then drops the mic. Make an assertion, express an opinion, back it up with facts, but never forget that the numbers are there to support the story, and not the other way around. Cinnamon... face chewing... it must getting close to lunch time.

I am using Yoast premium as well. It is helpful for Rich snippits but I keep getting Micro Data errors. Honestly I cannot tell if it is helping me but from what I have read it is a big deal.

I'm a huge believer that you CAN find a great writer on these low-cost sites. But I'm an even stronger believer that you'll (a) have to be very lucky (b) spend a lot of time weeding out low-quality providers and (c) be better off hiring an in-house writer/team to handle the duties. Based on my experience, however, most agencies creating in-house writing teams fall short in one of two areas: Even though they have the staff to create worthwhile, meaningful content, they refuse to commit to quality, focusing more on speed than precision, delivering anemic posts that clients soon see through. When the clients bolt, the writing team is disbanded. The problem was neither the writing team nor the clients. The agency simply lacked the heart to do what was right. They create a team of ONLY inexperienced writers, which means the quality of the content is likely to wane over time, and no one is likely to notice until it's too late. RS

Dirk, You are making me chuckle My apologies if I'm further confusing things. The generic message is created initially/immediately, as we log the post into the system. Everyone gets that message, unless the post is spam or an obvious poor fit. Every other post is reviewed in-depth, at which point we begin to separate them out based on return to to the author or deny. Whether the post is accepted or denied, however, in nearly all cases, it will need to be returned to the author with questions. Also, Dirk, don't hesitate to reach out to me - ronell.smith@moz.com - if you'd like to run an idea by me in advance of creating a post. All I ask for is at least a sketch/outline first, not simply a headline, and I can provide feedback.