Hacking Your Way to 5x Higher Organic Click-Through Rates (and Better Conversion Rates & Rankings, too)

Posted by larry.kim

[Estimated read time: 13 minutes]

Last month we discussed why organic CTR is kind of a big deal. I believe that click-through rate is tremendously valuable and that achieving above-average CTRs can lead to better rankings, particularly on long tail queries.

But even if you don't believe click-through rate can impact rankings, optimizing for a higher CTR still means you're optimizing toward the goal of attracting more clicks. More clicks means more traffic and higher conversion rates — because if you can make people more worked up about your product/solution, that carries through to conversions, leads, and sales.

All great, important things!

So what the heck — why isn't every SEO obsessed with raising organic click-through rates like myself and many other PPC marketers are?

Why isn't CTR optimization a bigger deal in organic search today?

For starters, it's ridiculously hard to tell what your organic CTR is for a keyword. Thanks, Google.

In the Search Analytics section of the Search Console, Google only gives you a sampling of 1,000 queries. Because you only have access to a sample of keywords, you can't arbitrarily find out a CTR for any individual keywords.

It's much easier to find our your CTR in paid search with AdWords. You can type in any word and find out what your CTR is for that word.

Another challenge preventing CTR from being a bigger deal today is Google Analytics, which hasn't provided keywords to us for years. You can figure out the number of impressions and clicks for your top 1,000 pages, but the limited query data (1 percent of total) is a killer. It might be easy to see your CTR data, but it's hard to know whether what you can see is good or not.

Also, many people just don't realize how much leverage there is in increasing CTR. Donkey headlines (bottom 10%) tend to do around 3x worse than average, whereas unicorn headlines (top 10%) tend to do around 2x better than average. By converting donkeys to unicorns, you might not realize that by boosting your CTR could increase clicks to your site by 5x.

And one final important point (and yet another reason to kill your donkeys!): low CTRs typically also lead to low conversion rates — this is true for both organic and paid search. You can easily test this out yourself by analyzing your own website data.

Conversion Rate vs. CTR for one of my customers.

Introducing Larry's High CTR Pyramid Scheme

Let's look at a graph that shows the click-through rate by rank for my 1,000 keywords obtained through Google Search Console:

The blue curve shows the CTRs on average for any given spot for all keywords. But that's an average. An average includes all the top performers (unicorns) as well as the worst performers (donkeys).

There is considerable variance here.

• The top 10 percent (the unicorns) have CTRs that are more than double the average (~55 percent vs. ~27 percent in first position).
• The bottom 10 percent (the donkeys) have organic CTRs that are three times lower than average (~27 percent vs. ~8 percent in first position).

This is such a great opportunity. But it's hard to realize just how great your CTR can be.

You can increase clicks by as much as 5x or even 6x by identifying your crappiest keyword donkeys and making them into high CTR headline unicorns, rather than stupid "optimized" title tag formulas — like:

Main Keyword, Long-Tail Keyword Variation 1, Long-Tail Keyword Variation 2.

This is a title tag optimization formula from ancient times — we're talking B.H. (Before Hummingbird). This is no longer necessary because Google is now much better at inferring query intent.

Welcome to the new world. To help you adapt, I’ve developed a repeatable SEO workflow to turn your donkeys into unicorns.

Behold! It's Larry's High CTR Pyramid Scheme! Here's how it works.

Detecting your donkeys

This whole process starts by finding your underperforming content donkeys using another of my hacks — Larry's Donkey Detection Algorithm. Download all of your query data from the Search Console or Google Analytics. Next, graph CTR vs. Average Position for the queries you rank for organically and add a trend line, like this:

The red line here is your average click through rate.

You want to focus ONLY on the keywords at very bottom of your curve. You don't want to turn any of your unicorns into donkeys. You only want to turn your donkeys into unicorns!

Now you can sort by secondary metrics, such as conversion rates, if that's what you care most about. Which of those donkeys have the highest conversion rates? Focus on these first because when you're able to turn that page into a traffic unicorn, it will also convert more!

If you care most about engagement, then you can filter by that metric. If you can improve the CTR of this page, then you can be reasonably confident that more people will engage with your content.

Your content is a diamond in the rough — or a great book with a terrible cover. Now is the time to polish your diamond and help it become exceptional.

Warning: Don't go crazy reoptimizing your title

Image courtesy of Fox

This is important. You shouldn't change the title tag over and over every week because this will cause problems in your quest for a magical cure to your donkey blues.

For one, Google will think your title is being dynamically populated. For another, you're just guessing, which is probably why you have this CTR issue.

Also, multiple changes will make it hard to get a good reading on why the CTR changed. Is it due to the title tag change or is it something else entirely (a SERP change, a competitor change, seasonality, etc.)? If you keep changing it, you won't have enough statistically significant data to make a data-driven decision.

Additionally, your ranking position could change, which would also further screw up things.

Bottom line: Don't just go and change titles willy-nilly.

We can make a unicorn — we have the technology!

To improve your organic click-through rate, you'll need to collect some data. You can do this by creating ads on Google AdWords for no more than $50.

You're going to create an ad pointing to the page you're reoptimizing using 10 different headlines. The reason you need 10 headlines is so you can discover your statistical unicorn, the headline with a CTR that stands above the rest in the top 10 percent.

Think of it like a lottery where the odds of winning are 1 in 10. Your odds of winning are much greater if you buy 10 lottery tickets instead of just one, right?

You can absolutely create more headlines; 10 is just the minimum. If you really want to do this well, writing 12, 13, or 14 headlines dramatically increases the odds that you'll find a unicorn.

Don't half-ass your new headlines

Image courtesy of Fox

I can't stress this enough: You really have to try out different headlines. It can't be the same headline, just with insignificant little changes (e.g., commas in different places, different punctuation, upper case vs. lower case).

Pop quiz: How many headlines do you count here?

• 1. How to Write a Book Fast
• 2. How to Write a Book FAST
• 3. How to Write a Book…FAST
• 4. How To Write A Book...Fast!
• 5. How to write a book, fast.

Did you say 5?

WRONG!

No, the answer is 1.

These aren't different headlines. They're just different punctuations and capitalizations.

You have to REALLY change the headlines.

Write your headlines using different personas. Who is the person speaking to the reader? Is it the bearer of bad news? The hero? The villain? The comedian? The feel-good friend?

Also change emotional trigger in your headlines. You can use emotional drivers like amusement, surprise, happiness, hope, or excitement:

Source: Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions

Other emotions include anger, disgust, affirmation, and fear. All four of these can become huge winners.

Vary your headlines. Get super creative!

What keywords should you choose?

Add the keywords that you were hoping to appear for when you created the content, along with keywords you're currently ranking for using query data from Google Analytics. Set those keywords to the broad match keyword match type.

Broad match is the default keyword match type and reaches the widest audience. It makes your ad eligible to appear whenever a user’s search query includes any word in your key phrase, in any order, and any syllables.

For example, if you use broad match on "luxury car," your ad might be displayed if a user types "luxury cars," "fast cars," "luxury apartments," or even “expensive vehicles,” which doesn’t include any of the terms in your keyword. Broad match will, in a way, act like RankBrain does — testing your headlines against a diverse set of queries, including related terms.

It's a perfect keyword sample set.

10 awesome tips to help you write outstanding headlines

Ultimately, you want to think about three things when writing your ads: your target customer; the persona you want to use to speak to them; and what emotionally-charged words you can use to incite action.

Steve Rayson of BuzzSumo recently shared some great research on the five elements of viral headlines. Here's what your headlines need to have:

• Emotional Hook: This could be a certain emotional word or superlative — words like: amazing, unbelievable, shocking, disgusting, or inspiring.
• Content Type: This tells the reader exactly what your content is — is your content images, quotes, pictures, or facts?
• Topic: Think of this as your keyword — it could be something evergreen like "content marketing" or more news-oriented like a Google algorithm update or SERP test.
• Format: This sets the expectation of the format your content will be in, whether it's a listicle, quiz, ebook, or something else.
• Promise Element: The reader benefit — tell the reader why your content will solve a problem, make them smarter or better at something, or that it provides vital information they need to know.

Here are five additional tips:

• Choose your words wisely: Go either extremely positive (e.g., best, greatest, biggest) or negative (e.g., stop, avoid, don't) with your headline word choices.
• Be specific: Make it clear to the reader what your content is about.
• Be unique: Show some personality. Create content that nobody else is doing (or improve on what others have already done). Dare to be different from your competitors.
• Create a sense of urgency: What will the reader learn, lose, fail at, or miss out on it they don't click right now?
• Be useful: How does clicking on your content benefit the reader?

So let's go back to our earlier headline example, How to Write a Book Fast. Based on this advice, what are some new headlines you could test? How about:

• Write Your Book Fast: X Trusted Time-Saving Tips
• X Surprising Tricks Nobody Told You About Writing Books Fast
• How to Finish Writing Your Book 5x Faster
• Write Fast Right Now: What Published Authors Don’t Want You to Know
• X Ridiculously Easy Steps to Write Your Book Faster
• What’s the Secret of Writing Great Books Fast?
• X Inspiring Tips That Will Help You Write Your Book Faster
• This Unusual Book Writing Technique Will Make You Write Faster
• Your Book is Doomed: How I Write Way Faster Than You

Which one of these do you think would win our ad test? The answer may just surprise all of us.

How would you reoptimize this headline based on this advice? I'd love to see your ideas in the comments.

Where to run your ad

By now you may be saying, "Larry this is great, but I'm a little worried about how much this all will cost. Any suggestions to keep costs down?"

YES!

We're just targeting English speakers. So you can save money by taking advantage of countries with lower CPCs.

Rather than running ads in New York City, where CPCs would likely be very expensive, maybe you could set up your ads to appear only in Canada (which has 29 percent lower CPCs on average than the U.S.) or in Ireland (which has 40 percent lower CPCs on average).

Prepare your Unicorn Detector

Make sure to set your ads to rotate evenly. You want to ensure that all 10–14 of your ads have a chance to run.

Before analyzing your results, you'll want at least 200 impressions per ad. This is actually the number of impressions Google AdWords uses before ascertaining a quality score, but more is better.

Also, you should bid to a specific position (e.g., bid to position 3, 4, or 5) using flexible bid strategies. That way you don't have to compare CTRs where one ad had a CTR of 20% in position 1 but a 2% CTR in position 8.

Now you can analyze your results and see which headline had the best CTR. Pretty easy, huh?

Usually one of your 10 ads will be a unicorn. However, if all the CTRs turn out the same (e.g., 2% vs. 2.1%) throw them all out and try out more headlines.

Your goal is to find an outlier, a headline that generates 2x, 3x, or 4x higher CTR than the rest.

Did it work?

Now we've reached the end. We've identified the donkeys. We have a workflow for auditioning new possible headlines. And we've identified the winning headlines. Now what?

You just swap them out. Replace your donkey title with the winning unicorn headline from your PPC ad test, and put it live.

To determine whether you've succeeded, track the number of clicks to the page to ensure that your CTR has indeed increased.

This is a ridiculously easy, low-risk, high-return strategy with a high probability of success because the new headline is battl- tested and should do just as well organically.

Conclusion: Say no to low CTR

Guys, this is crazy. First of all, think about all the SEO tasks you have to do. None of that is easy. It's all manual work.

Just take link building as one example. You're hoping for other people to link to you to help you rank better. In the end it's very much a hit-or-miss approach to SEO because you have no control over whether you actually get the link (or if it will even help).

Also, link building is more of an art, and one that some people just don't have the skills to do properly. Plus, when done poorly, bad link building can kill your rankings.

Here, the workflow — my High CTR Pyramid Scheme — is all within your own control. This is more like on-page SEO, changing titles and text, but this is a more methodical, data-driven way of doing it.

Optimizing for CTR is very leveraged. You can 5x your CTR if you're successful in turning a donkey into a unicorn. There's even more bonus points because it should result in ever better rankings, which should result in even more clicks. And your conversion rates will improve.

I personally believe that CTR is calculated both at a query/page and at the domain level (like domain and page authority in link building). Since we can't have CTR data for every possible page/query, it makes sense to have something to fall back on. So by killing off your CTR donkeys, you're improving your domain CTR score, which should help rankings of all the other pages on your site.

There's a famous Abraham Lincoln quote: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

Well, if I had one hour to spend on SEO, I would spend that one hour finding and fixing my donkey headlines, turning them into unicorn headlines. Hour for hour, I'm convinced you have a really great return here.

Your odds of winning the organic CTR lottery are 1 in 10. So go buy 10 lottery tickets!

Are you optimizing for CTR? If not, why?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from Moz Blog http://ift.tt/1rgyIqW
via IFTTT

Why the Traditional Marketing Funnel is Sabotaging Your Conversion Rate

The sales funnel.  It all seems so smooth and simple, doesn’t it?  Lots of prospects come in through the top, only to move in various, predictable stages like “Awareness” and “Discovery” only to come out the bottom as loyal, committed customers.

Except the reality of today’s sales and customer experience process is anything like that.

Things like brand advocacy, social media, and even our own experiences have changed the way we market to others.  Why then should we stay stuck in this rigid, old funnel structure?

We shouldn’t – and today’s article will show you why.

According to the Harvard Business Review, there are a myriad of ways that people learn of and interact with a product.  There are even times when customers don’t come through the top of the funnel, but rather somewhere in the middle.

A typical marketing funnel starts with more customers in the “Awareness” stage and ends with fewer in the “Retention” phase

Let’s say you were in the market for a new pair of running shoes. A friend recommends a specific brand and links to them on Facebook. On their page you can see user comments and testimonials as well as active discussions. You’ve just completely passed the Awareness and Discovery parts of the funnel and moved on to Engagement and likely even Purchase – because a recommendation from someone you trust is that valuable to you.

On your way to purchase these shoes, the company recommends some specialized insoles to help cushion your feet. Great idea.  Now you’ve instantly moved from consideration to purchase.  It’s also possible that you could go back and forth between funnel stages while you evaluate different products or brands

And with networks like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest always available at the tap of a button, the traditional sales funnel we all know and refer to ends up looking more like a pretzel, with twists, turns and overlaps at every corner.

Users will often double-back on their decisions, or switch between two points instantly

Moving the Focus from Transaction to Relationship

According to Antonio Lucio, Chief Brand Officer at Visa, the end goal is to shift priority from the transaction to the customer relationship.  To that end, Visa has created the “Customer Experience Journey” which looks at the process from transactions being a part of the customer relationship rather than the customer relationship being viewed purely in terms of transactions.

He gives the example of a family planning a trip from the U.S. to Mexico.  Visa has mapped out the whole experience:

• Family gets ideas on where to go from TripAdvisor
• Family gathers suggestions from friends on Facebook
• Family decides to get cash from an ATM to pay for their cab
• Family pays for their hotel via their Visa credit card
• Family shares photos of trip with friends back home via Instagram

You may see this list and think “Well, Visa is part of only one of these options” – which is true when you’re looking at each one as a transaction.

But step back a moment and look at the bigger picture. Every one of these points is conducive to building and nurturing the relationship with the customer. The transaction itself is just a small piece of the puzzle and not the end goal.  According to Lucio, “[w]hen you change from decision to engagement, you change the entire model.”

So What Does This Have to Do With Conversion Rate?

Here again, if you’re looking at the funnel purely from a revenue point of view, or spending too much time focusing on transactions, the customer experience gets lost in the shuffle. It becomes too much of a focus to think only of the numbers and not of the people driving them.  If you zero in on numbers alone, you miss out on so much more.  Just look at brands like Tesla Motors on Facebook. Do you think there are nearly 1.5 million Tesla owners?

Tesla Motors has nearly 1.5 million followers – not all of them customers

Not yet – but these people admire what the company has been able to build and the values they stand for. All of those things feed back into the brand itself and create the customer experience. Even digital products and services like SaaS and mobile apps can benefit from this adjusted funnel. As the Harvard article explains, with traditional funnels, marketing is a separate entity.  With SaaS and other platforms, the marketing and the service go hand in hand.

Marketing with SaaS

The SalesForce AppExchange, for instance, doesn’t just look at the process as “how do we market this?” but rather, “how do we add value to this so that the things we recommend market for us?” Many of the apps profiled here weren’t made by Salesforce, but Salesforce and the apps it works with form a kind of symbiotic relationship where both parties win.

Not all apps featured on the AppExchange were built by Salesforce, but all of them use it to enable their own customer experience journeys

Another example is Google. What started out as solely a search engine has branched out to become a search engine, email service, word processor, storage service and countless other services, all entwined under a single brand umbrella. Every service plays well with other services – making it faster and easier for us to create, communicate and share. And our brains thrive on faster and easier.

Sure, there are other search engines out there, even other companies that have just as much influence as Google. But they don’t integrate in a way that makes our experience faster, easier or better. When was the last time you found exactly what you needed within seconds, using Bing?

The Bottom Line on Funnels and Conversion Rates

As the Harvard article says, the traditional funnel isn’t going away anytime soon. There are still products and services out there that gain new customers this way. But to overlay and apply that to our more open, two-way communication world is just trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. It’s not flexible, not adaptive, and just doesn’t work – leading to poor experiences for everyone.

When you look at marketing as the multi-faceted beast it is, you’ll be able to create your own funnel “roadmap” that incorporates all the steps you need to engage and empower your customers in a way where everyone wins.

What are your thoughts? Have you thrown out the traditional funnel in favor of another sales model? Which one did you choose and how did it work for you?  Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today! Follow @sherice on Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ for more articles like this!

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1NPHPcg
via IFTTT

8 Common Conversion Optimization Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes - whether it's in marketing or in our daily interactions with other people. Even if you're a seasoned marketer, there are a number of conversion optimization mistakes you could be making. In this post, I'll outline some […]

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

8 Common Conversion Optimization Mistakes

--
Written by Shane Barker, Shane Barker

The post 8 Common Conversion Optimization Mistakes appeared first on Search Engine People Blog.

from Search Engine People Blog http://ift.tt/1W28Pb1
via IFTTT

9 Easy Ways to Improve Your Marketing Resume

I’m not going to mince words: Hiring kind of sucks.

First, if I’m hiring for a marketing role, that usually means someone on my team is moving on, and that’s bittersweet. It’s great to see people I’ve worked with grow and try new things, but it’s also sad to see them go. Second, and worse, hiring takes up a ton of time. It can be so hard to find the right person!

The struggle is real

In my time at WordStream, I’ve reviewed HUNDREDS of marketing resumes, some better than others. Some a LOT better than others.

If you want to get hired for a marketing job, you need to make sure your resume immediately stands out, because the hiring manager is busy and frustrated and doesn’t have time to grant everyone a phone screen.

Here are nine simple ways to improve your marketing resume and increase your chances of getting an interview.

1. Add stats & figures

When reviewing marketing resumes, hiring managers want to see hard evidence of strong performance. So take a look back at the work you did in your last or current role and make sure you quantify your successes.

Math: Anyone can do it!

Examples of stats you might include:

• Growth in site traffic thanks to your work on SEO or social media campaigns
• Growth in email subscribers or increases in email open rates
• Conversion rate improvements through landing page optimization or other tests
• Reduction in cost per action or cost per acquisition

The same way that numbers improve CTR in ad headlines, they stand out from all the verbiage on a resume and show that you’re results-driven.

2. Use a striking resume template

Chances are, at any given moment, your hiring manager’s eyes are glazing over with the boredom of reviewing dozens of resumes in a row that all look the same. Especially if your experience isn’t absolutely stellar or perfectly aligned with the role, you can get your resume noticed by using a striking resume format.

Some design elements that can help you stand out from the other marketing resumes include:

• Use of color – Don’t go crazy; the main text of the resume should be black. But in the marketing world, a little color (keep it refined!) is better than strict black and white throughout. (I wouldn’t say this is true if you’re applying for a technical job or something in law or medicine.) Below is an example of a resume that makes good subtle use of color.

• Use of fonts – Different fonts for headings and body text improve readability and the overall look of your resume. But again, don’t choose anything too “creative.” Check out Canva’s guide to the best and worst fonts for resumes.

• A two-column design – This can help you put a little more information on the page without things looking too cluttered, and it’s often easier to read (this is why print magazines use columns).

Depending on the role, attractive resume formatting could just be a nice-to-have or it could be critical. If you’re applying for a job in design, your resume is effectively part of your portfolio, so don’t take shortcuts. Make it count.

If you don’t know where to start, you can find free marketing resume templates on the web; try these ones from HubSpot or LiveCareer.

3. Sharpen up your skills section

Most resumes include a section that lists your skillsets, but I’ve seen plenty of marketing resumes where it was a total waste of space. Mastery of Microsoft Office is pretty much a bare-minimum skill for any marketing job, so think bigger.

Most importantly, make sure the skills you list are relevant to the marketing job you’re applying for. A good third of the resumes I get don’t even use the words in the job title anywhere on the resume! This is a terrible idea, because it makes it look like you’re just carpet-bombing people with your resume and didn’t bother to read the job description. Plus, some companies use screening software, meaning if your resume doesn’t include certain keywords, a real person won’t ever even look at it.

In particular, hiring managers are going to be looking for three things:

• Proficiency in specific channels/techniques – List any broad or channel-specific marketing skills you have, such as PPC, content marketing, lead nurturing, public speaking, video editing, web design, mobile marketing, data visualization, etc. Again, make sure you include the skills required in the job description (if the job title is “SEO Manager,” your resume should include skills relevant to SEO, like link building and keyword research). But include your other marketing skills too; you never know what additional skills the company might consider to be a bonus.
• Proficiency in specific tools/software platforms – List all the tools/software that you use to accomplish the above techniques (SEO tools, PPC platforms and third-party software, email marketing platforms, video or design tools, etc.). Make sure you check the job description to see if they’re looking for a candidate who has experience with any specific platforms or tools, such as AdWords or Photoshop.
• Proficiency in coding languages and operating systems – List any programming languages you know (even good old-fashioned HTML) plus operating systems and content management systems. (For example, the WordStream site runs on Drupal, which isn’t super-common, so I always notice when it pops up on a resume and consider it a plus.)

It’s also worth mentioning certifications and relevant awards (i.e. marketing industry awards).

Try not to be too vague or general in this section. Pretty much everyone believes they have “the ability to multitask”; putting that on your resume is like saying you’re a good driver.

4. Add links to your work

This is key! You can claim anything you want on a resume, but your claims are going to go way farther if you’re able to back them up.

Consider adding links to:

• Your LinkedIn profile (just polish it up first and get a decent amount of connections)
• An online portfolio (if you’re applying for a design, development, or writing job, say)
• Your personal blog or your company’s blog if you’re involved in it
• Your social media profiles, such as Twitter, Google+, or Instagram, but ONLY if they’re professional and relevant to the position
• Contributed articles you’ve written or other evidence of thought leadership

When I’m looking to hire a writer or content marketer, I really appreciate when candidates make it easy for me to see recent samples of their work.

5. Keep the education section simple

List any degrees you have, where you got them and when. Don’t bother including any of the below:

• Your grade point average
• Any clubs or societies or fraternities/sororities you belonged to
• Minor academic awards (e.g. Dean’s list)
• The fact that you studied abroad
• Your coursework  

Seriously, just leave all this out. It looks amateurish – unless there is literally nothing else to put on your resume because you’ve never had a job. (The rules are a little different if you’re trying to land an internship.)

The fact is, 95% of hiring managers don’t care about the details of your academic background, because getting A’s in college doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about how the person will perform in a real work environment, and classwork doesn’t really translate into experience. So don’t waste space; include more details and data from your previous jobs instead.

6. Add a summary sentence at the top

My colleague Meg Lister told me, “I LOVE when people add a sentence to the top of their resume to describe who they are or why they want the job. It’s a nice way to personalize an application without a cover letter.”

You should have a cover letter (see #9, below) but if the application doesn’t allow for it, definitely make use of this tip. Add a sentence at the top, right under your contact information, that summarizes who you are and what you’re looking for in your next career move.

An example of a good summary sentence is “Self-motivated SEO with six years’ experience, strong analytical skills, and a belief in the power of holistic marketing campaigns.” (This is good because it differentiates you from other candidates, like a value prop for your resume.)

Here’s an example of a bad summary sentence: “I am seeking a full-time position as a content marketing specialist.” (This is bad because it all it does is state the obvious – duh, that’s the job you’re applying for – and shows no personality.)

7. Keep it to a single page

Unless you’re applying for a very senior position, like a VP role where they’re looking for 10+ years of experience, pare down the information on your resume so it fits on one page. Otherwise you’re sucking up too much of the hiring manager’s time.

If you’re struggling to cut down your marketing resume, here are some ideas:

• Try a two-column design as mentioned above, like this:

• Only include your last three to four jobs, not your entire job history, especially if earlier roles didn’t give you relevant experience (I don’t need to know about the summer you were a waitress).
• Condense the summary of each role to three bullet points max.
• Reduce the font size (but no smaller than 10 pt).

8. List a few hobbies

If you have room and it doesn’t push you over the first page, show the hiring manager a bit of your personality by including a brief list of two to three hobbies. It reminds the hiring manager that you’re an actual human.

We’ve hired at people at WordStream whose hobbies include birdwatching, figure skating, kendo, bartending, reviewing food trucks, mountain climbing, marathons … (I mean different people, not one person all at the same time).

Our beloved Erin at her OTHER job

If the hiring manager thinks they will like you as a person, that might give you the edge.

9. Write a cover letter

Your resume isn’t ever going to tell the whole story, so always supplement the resume with a cover letter, and always tailor it to the job you’re applying for.

Cover Letter Do’s:

• Do mention why you’re interested in THIS ROLE in particular.
• Do highlight the two or three elements of your work or life experience that are most relevant to this role and speak best to your ability to do the job well.
• Do show your personality. That means you need to write the cover letter yourself; don’t copy and paste from a template you find on the internet.

Cover Letter Don’ts:

• Don’t use fancy-sounding words you would never say, like “synchronicity” and “myriad” (ugh).
• Don’t go on and on and on (we’re busy, remember?). Two to three short paragraphs tops.
• Don’t be phony. Don’t pretend to be “passionate” about things you’re not passionate about.
• Don’t say you’re just trying to get your foot in the door, trying to build experience for your future career, etc. The hiring manager wants to find someone who is excited about this role, not someone who just needs a job.

Is Your Marketing Resume Already Slammin’?

Check out our open jobs! WordStream is hiring.

from Internet Marketing Blog by WordStream http://ift.tt/1VGUyRn
via IFTTT

The Start-to-Finish Guide to Optimizing Your WordPress Blog Posts [Plus a Checklist]

Posted by sergeystefoglo

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. There's a good chance you'll need to optimize or work on a website that uses WordPress, if you haven’t already! Whether you’re a business owner, designer, developer, PPC expert, SEO consultant, or writer — getting familiar with WordPress is a smart move.

When I started out in SEO, I worked with local businesses that hired smaller firms to design or develop their sites. Naturally, most people gravitated towards WordPress as their CMS of choice: it was easy to customize, even easier to maintain, simple to use, and did the job well.

It wasn’t until I started working with websites that were using Joomla or Drupal that I began to appreciate the simplicity and flexibility that WordPress offers. Don’t get me wrong, Joomla and Drupal are both great, but they require a lot more setup and learning beforehand (especially if your goal is to optimize the site for organic search).

What this post is about

This post is going to walk through the process of uploading and optimizing a blog post using WordPress and Yoast SEO. I'll go into detail on both of these topics and provide you with a downloadable checklist that you can give to your team or use yourself.

Before we get started

Yoast SEO

While it’s true that there are a variety of SEO plugins available for WordPress, I prefer Yoast SEO and will be referencing it as an essential plugin for this post. If you don’t currently have Yoast installed, you can visit their website to download it or simply search for “Yoast SEO” in Wordpress and install it directly.

Pages and posts

WordPress has two basic sections for uploading content. There are pages (which are defined as landing pages on your website), and there are posts (which are essentially blog posts). One could argue that this article could be used as a guide to uploading and optimizing landing pages on WordPress, but I believe there's a different approach for that and therefore will keep the focus of this article around posts.

Uploading your blog post

Before you get to optimizing your blog posts for organic search, you need to get them live on your site. If you're familiar with how posting a blog works on WordPress, feel free to skip ahead to the optimization section of this article.

1. After logging into your site, hover over “Posts” and then click on “Add New.”

2. Copy and paste the title of your post where it says "Enter title here," then paste the body text of your post in the section below (don’t copy over images yet).

Pro Tip: I personally write all of my blog posts in a separate program (like Word or Ulysses) and then copy over the text into WordPress when I’m ready to post it. You can definitely write your blog within WordPress and save it as a draft if you aren’t ready to publish it, but if you like having a local copy of your writing I'd recommend simply writing it in a different program.

Pro Tip: You can alternate between the “visual” and “text” editor here. If you're familiar with HTML, I'd recommend “text," as you can spot any potential errors in the code and have more control. If not, the “visual” editor works perfectly fine.

Pro Tip: If you have links in your post (which you should), double check that they were added correctly. If not, you can add a link using the WYSIWYG editor. In general, try to at least have 3 relevant internal links in each of your posts. Don’t be afraid of adding external links, either! The important thing to remember is that if the reader will find it useful, it's okay to add it.

3. If you have images, place your cursor where you want the image. Click on “Add Media” and select “Upload Files.” After choosing your preferred settings, click “insert into post” to add your image in your article.

Note: There are various settings and options for sizing and aligning images. Please see this write up for a more detailed explanation of how images and featured images work in WordPress.

Pro Tip: It’s always a good idea to compress your images before uploading them so they don’t cause long load times. Here’s a great guide to compressing your images.

4. Scroll down a bit and you should see the “Categories” section on the right side of your screen. You don’t have to categorize your post (unless your site is organized by categories), but you can add one if you wish. If you do, WordPress will create category pages that pull in posts within that category. Here's a great write-up on how WordPress utilizes category pages and what you should consider from an SEO perspective.

5. Under the "Categories" section, you'll see the tags section. Similar to categories, you don’t have to use tags. In fact, I would argue that you should always noindex tagged pages that are auto-generated by WordPress, as oftentimes it can cause duplication issues. Nonetheless, you can add tags to your post here.

6. If you scroll down further you'll see an “Author” section, where you can choose the author of your blog post.

7. Scroll back up and find the section that’s called “Publish.” Here you can choose “Preview” to make sure everything looks right in your post before optimizing/uploading it. If something doesn’t look the way you want it to, just edit that section.

8. If you want a snippet of your post to appear on your blog homepage instead of the entire thing, simply place your cursor where you want the break to be and click on the “Insert Read More tag” button. Read this post that explains the “Read More” tag and its function in WordPress.

This should get you to a point where you're ready to optimize your blog — let’s focus on this next.

Optimizing your blog post

Getting down the foundational elements of uploading a blog post on WordPress is crucial, but we are marketers, aren’t we? This section breaks down what you (or your team) should be doing to optimize a post on WordPress as best as possible. My goal with creating the checklist at the bottom of this article is so that you and your team can reference it when uploading posts. Pretty soon it'll become second nature!

1. Assuming you’re still on the “Edit Post” page, scroll down until you see a section titled “Yoast SEO.”

Pro Tip: If you don’t see this section, make sure you have the correct plugin installed. If you do and still don’t see this section, scroll up to the very top right of the screen and click on “Screen Options.” From here, make sure that “Wordpress SEO by Yoast” is checked.

2. Click on “Edit Snippet” in the Yoast SEO section. The “SEO title” box will be where you input your title tag.

Pro Tip: In general, you want to include your main keyword first followed by your brand name or website name. Also, make sure that you stay within 40–65 characters here.

3. You guessed it — the “Meta description” box is where you'll input your meta description.

Pro Tip: Although not necessary, including your main keyword in the meta description can be a great idea if it flows well with your content. Google has explicitly mentioned that meta descriptions aren’t important to search engine rankings, but that doesn’t mean using a keyword won’t help users click on your post. Because of this, try to make your meta description as enticing as possible to a potential user. Why should they click on your blog post instead of the other options available in the SERP? Also, as a general rule, stay within 70–156 characters here.

4. A new addition to Yoast SEO (although not WordPress), the “Slug” section allows you to edit the URL of your post. By default, WordPress will add the title of your post to the URL (which isn’t a bad way to go), but if you want to alter it this is where you can.

Pro Tip: There are “standard practice” tips for URL optimization that don’t necessarily affect your rankings, but solidify what your post is about to users and search engines. These standard practice tips include keeping your URL short, including a keyword if possible, and having the URL make obvious what the post is about. Here is a great write up from Rand on URL optimization.

5. If you click on the gear icon tab within the Yoast SEO section, you'll notice options for things like meta robots and the canonical URL. In most cases, these settings will already be set on a global scale; however, you can override your global settings for specific posts here.

6. If you click on the "Share" icon, you can override the default metadata (titles, images, etc.) that Facebook and Twitter will pull for your post. In general, you can leave these blank. However, if you have a good reason to override them (testing different images, optimizing for various target audiences, etc.) this is where you can.

7. We’ve covered a lot of important on-page elements so far, but one we haven’t covered is the <h1> tag. This tag is crucial for telling search engines what your page is about. In most cases, your title will automatically be an <h1> tag.

Pro Tip: I see a lot of sites who have multiple <h1> tags on a page, as well as many sites who have duplicate <h1> tags across the site. Often times, the logo or phone number can be wrapped in an <h1> tag. Make sure to double check that you have one <h1> tag for every page, and make sure that these tags are all unique.

8.A dding alt tags to images is fairly simple with Wordpress. There are various ways to do this, but it all comes down to whether you’re using the visual editor or the text editor.

Visual: Click on the image you want to add alt text to, and click on the “Edit” icon. Add your alt text in the “Alternative Text” field. Make sure to click on “Update” after.

Text: Simply add the alt=“” snippet of code inside the image tag. It should look something like this:

<img src="http://ift.tt/1Nhlbtk" alt="keyword goes here">

In general, alt tags should describe the photo. So, if I was writing a blog post about central vacuum systems and I had an image of a man using a central vacuum system, the ideal alt tag would be “Man Using Central Vacuum System” or “Man Cleaning With Central Vacuum System.”

9. It’s important to take a look at your internal links within your post. Are they topically relevant? Try to include at least 3–4 links that point to your internal pages and don’t be scared to throw in good external links as well.

10. Does your post have a clear CTA? Oftentimes this can be a “Read more posts like this” callout or a “Sign up for our newsletter” button; however, it could also look like a “buy now” CTA for sites that write about products.

11. After following the above steps, take a second glance at everything before hitting “publish.” If you publish your post and realize that something doesn’t look right later on, just head back to the editor, make your changes, and click “update.”

Extras

Optimization checklist

As promised, please download and distribute this checklist as you please. My hope is that after going through it multiple times, posting and optimizing your blog posts on WordPress will come as second nature to you (or your team).

I want the checklist!

3 more essential WordPress plugins for marketers

1. Broken Link Checker – Essential plugin that monitors all of your internal links and regularly reports on where they are. Easily one of the most simple yet helpful plugins out there.
2. W3 Total Cache – This plugin helps increase the speed of your site by leveraging caching, and minifying code. Highly recommended!
3. Gravity Forms – While there are some decent options for contact form plugins on WordPress, Gravity Forms beats them all because of the customization options, continued plugin support, and add-ons..

If you’re interested, I wrote an all-around guide to using Yoast SEO on the Distilled blog earlier this year. Also, please visit the good people at Yoast, as their blog is full of great advice and tutorials.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from Moz Blog http://ift.tt/1X3KhhA
via IFTTT