Hybrid SEO: bright futures for personal & professional career progression

SEO is a challenging and rewarding career for people from a number of different types of backgrounds.

It requires a degree of comfort with numbers, as SEO professionals should be able to look at the data coming in and understand how to make adjustments to improve the success of their campaign.

SEOs should also understand how to take the big picture– of business goals and objectives– and be able to translate it into a marketing SEO strategy. Professionals need to understand where their SEO efforts should thrive to help the brand achieve the stated goals.

SEOs also need to excel at experimentation. If there is one constant in the world of online marketing, it is that it is always changing.

Google regularly issues new updates, customer preferences change and the technology updates, all forcing marketers to be able to work well within these parameters of constant change. The professionals that can judge trends and make accurate predictions about how websites can prepare for impending changes are the ones that will see the most success.

Being comfortable with this level of experimentation and uncovering new paths towards success also attracts candidates who are capable of thinking outside the box. These successful marketers are not only flexible, but they are imaginative and creative.

These skill sets, however, can serve professionals beyond SEO. As the industry continues to grow and mature, professionals are going to have to find a way to work with members of other marketing departments.

Walls between marketing silos are coming down, which in turn is adjusting workflows and methodologies. Professionals who already have the skills needed to reach across these marketing silos are well-positioned for both organizational and personal growth.

Why the future is bright for SEO hybrids

According to the 2014 Digital Marketer Report by Experian Marketing Services, an estimated 80 percent of marketers worldwide say that they will be running cross-channel marketing campaigns over the next year. These brands have to learn how to bring their different platforms together so that they can function as a single unit.

Additionally, 61 percent of marketing leaders surveyed for the same report indicated that collecting and managing structured and unstructured data is among their biggest challenges.

Given that 88 percent of B2B and 76 percent of B2C organizations say they use content marketing, however, the need is now greater than ever for brands to learn how to use SEO, measure their progress, pinpoint opportunities and remain relevant. Online marketing is no longer a guessing game. Instead, analytics are a big part of this system.

Hybrid marketers are able to take the skills that make them exceptionally good SEOs and expand them into new roles so they can maximize the full potential of the marketing department and produce genuine changes.

Since SEO helps brands improve the relevancy of the company’s marketing efforts for the search engines, these hybrid marketers can expand the usage of these optimization practices throughout the organization, improving the success of campaigns.

Last year at Share15 Adobe shared great insights and discussed a hybrid approach to SEO. The company spoke about  progress from 2006, when it was still just doing basic, fragmented SEO, to what it termed the ONESEARCH effort in 2015.

During this push towards integrated SEO, Adobe brought together teams and worked together towards the same goal. These joint efforts yielded spectacular results, with a 73 percent decrease in cost-per-subscription, a 106 percent increase in subscription volume and a 45 percent decrease in SEM spend.

Despite the growing interest of brands in cross-channel marketing, there remain talent gaps within the marketing industry. Thirty percent of respondents on a recent survey said that finding candidates with the right qualifications can be a big problem.

The SEO professionals who are able to hone their skills and expand their professional expertise will be the ones who are best-positioned for the future of online marketing. They will be able to elevate the importance of SEO within their organization while also being able to bridge the divide that separate the different areas of marketing. They will help their brands advance while also growing their own careers.

How to elevate SEO and advance your career

Strengthen your skills in analytics and measurement

Measurement is crucial to any successful marketing campaign, yet according to the Online Marketing Institute, there is a 37 percent talent gap in analytics. This makes learning about data an important first step in the journey to becoming a hybrid marketer.

Understanding analytics inside and out –including measuring your successes and failures, how your campaigns are impacting conversions and the bottom line as well as how to present this information to your business leaders– is crucial to helping everyone else understand the important nature of SEO.

The entire marketing team, from social media to content development, needs SEO to shine against the competition, and understanding analytics is an important step in making this need clear.

Analytics will also help you and your team create more effective and efficient campaigns, responding directly to the numbers, thereby improving the brand’s position.

Cultivate relationships with those in other areas of marketing

It is also important to cultivate your relationships with professionals in other areas of marketing. Get to know the people who work in social media, paid marketing and lead nurturing roles– such as email marketing.

You want to understand their strategies and goals to see how they correlate with your own ideas. Start to build the bridges that will help you overcome divisions and work together. Find opportunities to collaborate on projects or seek each other’s advice when appropriate to set the foundation of working together.

Personally take the time to learn skills and earn certifications

Maturing within the online marketing industry is also about personal growth. Use your own time to learn skills and earn certifications in other areas of marketing. There are a variety of online resources available to help you master the latest strategies and techniques.

Learn how to use the entire technology stack employed by your organization so you are not confined solely to the tools used in SEO. For example, learn how to use Google Analytics through the Google Analytics Academy.

Look for opportunities to expand professional experience beyond your title

Let your managers and bosses know that you have earned new certifications and that you are interested in putting them to use for your organization.

Look for opportunities to collaborate with marketers from other specialties and use your new insight to help your marketing campaigns reach the next level of success.

Working on these collaborative projects will not only help you practice and improve your skills, but they can also be excellent resume builders.

Use your SEO skills to evangelize your success

Use your hybrid marketing skills to create a personal brand online. Use keyword research to uncover the types of positions that you would be most interested in reaching and the terms related to your ideal industries.

Optimize your personal online space, such as your website and resume, to help demonstrate your expertise in SEO and hybrid marketing to employers when they look for people in your field. This can be your key to upward mobility within the industry.

The marketing world is rapidly changing as consumers’ channel agnosticism forces brands to become more sophisticated and more integrated in their marketing efforts. Professionals themselves have to be willing to change and adapt to these situations if they want to remain relevant in their field.

Casting light on the relevancy of SEO while also working to expand your experience and knowledge beyond one specialty into a hybrid marketer is an effective way to evangelize and elevate your value and position in your organizations.

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Optimizing for Accessibility + SEO: Formatting & Link Overlaps

Posted by Laura.Lippay

[Estimated read time: 13 minutes]

(header photo "Kenzie" by H.L.W. from the Blind Photographers Flickr Group.)

Search engine optimization (SEO) evolved by search engines creating algorithms to automate the classification and ranking of websites, with SEOs manipulating the loopholes in those algos.

Accessibility, on the other hand, is born out of a desire to be inclusive; to connect humans to information through assistive technology (AT).

When we strip down both industries to where a machine is reading a web page, there are a few overlaps. That’s what we’re looking at in this series. If you’re optimizing for search engines, you’re also affecting how people using screen readers and assistive technologies are experiencing your site.

In today’s post on accessibility + SEO, we’re digging into on-page aspects that include formatting text, colors, links, and content that we can’t see see but machines can. The previous post covered structure overlaps, and we’ll cover images, video, and non-text elements in the last post following this one.

Hidden text

There are times when something that can be seen on the page provides information or context that isn’t able to be read by bots or screen readers, like in an infographic image. The text, graphs, and overall context are all in the image, so in this case, you’d want to provide text that screen readers and bots can use for information and context — either visibly or hidden.

There may also be other reasons you want to actively hide text from all visible display, but not from bots or screen readers. An example might be a paragraph that expands to show more text only when clicking on a caret. In this case, the text is hidden by default from the visual experience, but you want to make sure that screen readers and bots can get it.

This table below shows how each of these different methods of hiding content is perceived by sighted users, screen readers and search engines. I’m not an accessibility expert, so if you know of anything different or additional, please do share.

Hidden text method	Who can see the default content with each method?
	Sighted visitors	Screen readers	Google* (links are examples of Google caching this method)
Visibility:hidden	No	No	Yes
Display:none	No	No	Yes
Text-indent: -10000	No	Yes	Yes
CSS clip	No	Yes	Yes
Positioning off-screen in CSS	No	Yes	Yes
HTML 5 hidden	No	No	?
ARIA-hidden=”true”	Yes	Some	?

*I’d highly recommend not using these hidden text techniques solely for spam, as Google may index hidden text, but doesn’t give hidden text the same weight or ranking effect as non-hidden text, and if it’s abused and has to be manually reviewed, you could find yourself in some trouble.

On that note, let’s dig into two actual common examples: one where the primary content is in an image, so we need to make hidden content available to screen readers and bots, and a second where the primary content is hidden from users by default, and we need to make sure screen readers and bots find it.

Providing text for an infographic

Here’s an example SEOs will love of an infographic where we want to provide the infographic information and context to the screen reader and search engines. The simple way would be to add the text to the page below the infographic, like in this example.

But Ted Drake is an accessibility genius (who has been invaluable with his help in this post series and my interest in a11y in general — thank you Ted), and has also shown us an option to provide the information for screen readers and bots that is invisible to sighted users. The infographic is pulled into a page (or easily shared) via an iFrame and, in addition to the infographic image, that iFrame HTML has all of the descriptive text in clipped content, invisible to the sighted user reading the same content via the infographic, but fully legible and interactive for screen readers and bots that can’t read the infographic.

Check it out for yourself. This page appears in Google search results for the infographic text "The days are longer, but you’re still not able to find time to plan those much-needed getaways." That text does not actually appear visually on the page.

Side note: Notice that the one with the text on the page, the example I provided above, is ranking higher than the visible text one for me.

In this hidden text example, the infographic itself is an image provided on a separate HTML page with the text information in a 1px CSS clip, pulled into that page in the search results via an iFrame.

At first glance the separate HTML page looks like it only has an image on it, but you’ll see in the code that there is also text hidden in a “visually-hidden” CSS class that clips the content, and this text has semantic markup allowing screen reader users to navigate through it, copy text, etc., making it a highly usable, interactive alternative to having the text right on the page.

See it in action with the VoiceOver screen reader here:

Since I know this is going to cause a lot of excitement among the more spam-bent SEOs reading this, I’ll also mention that those who control the spam-tweaking at Google are also aware of this method, and even this specific example. While they’re confident their processes for specifically combating hidden text spam are strong, I can only show this example in good conscience by also saying don’t spam. Google is watching. Do consider this method for accessibility and especially for sharing infographics along with the text content.

Hiding ancillary text

There are times when you want to show the sighted user some text, but have them click something like a caret to expand for more text content if they choose (or skim by it and move on to whatever else is on the page).

I’ve done site audits where the functionality was there (for sighted users), but the content wasn’t indexed because of the way it was coded. You can use display:none for the default content that’s hidden, which will hide the extra content from screen readers and sighted users skimming through the page, but allow access to that content if the caret or link is clicked by either user.

Here’s an example where the Netflix Help pages hide content from the sighted visitor and screen reader unless the visitor chooses to expand and access the content. It’s using display:none in the CSS. It’s accessible to screen readers and sighted visitors and the caret content is indexed by search engines. Win-win-win.

Hidden text do’s and don’ts:

• Don’t use hidden text for spam. Stuffing hidden keywords into a page is not recommended if you want to keep your nose clean for SEO, and can be a terrible experience for screen reader visitors.
• Do consider sighted and non-sighted audiences: If you need to hide text, consider which method is best to use depending on whether you want a screen reader to see it and a sighted user not to, or if you want all visitors not to.

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a mostly old-school SEO practice that still lingers. It is/was very popular on pages where the site is very image-heavy, on old Flash pages, or even on pages with normal content but where the developer wants more text-based keywords on the page. This is done just for search engines, so why do we care if visitors other than screen readers come across it?

Luckily it's harder to find good keyword stuffing examples these days, so @Joeartdotcom sent me a perfect archived example of a 2007 Patagonia home page with a big image, minimal content, and a bunch of “Search Index Page Description” text. Listen to it via a screen reader (like ChromeVox for Chrome or Fangs for Firefox). Sighted readers can see the text on this Wayback Machine page if you’d like to read along, or just listen to this video.

Keyword stuffing hopefully isn’t as big of an issue as it was back in 2007, but it’s nonetheless still an option, and it’s very likely to annoy your screen reader users.

Keyword stuffing do’s and don’ts

• Do think ahead when building: Avoid having to keyword-stuff to attract search engines to begin with, and build accessible pages with relevant, indexable text information.
• Do write naturally. It’s best for everyone, and this can be done using keywords but not abusing keywords.

Size and color contrast of text

People will often use small fonts and low contrast text simply for page aesthetics. SEOs will sometimes use low-contrast small font text to add more keywords to a page without distracting from the rest of the content.

It’s not something I’ll get into detail here, but search engines can consider font size and color. They know what we’re all up to.

Here’s where this can be problematic beyond SEO. Colorblind or color vision-deficient readers may be unable to distinguish certain colors or only see things in black and white or gray shades, and these deficiencies can be mild or severe.

This video shows some color contrast examples that are tough even for readers without color deficiencies.

Additionally, low-vision readers may be elderly readers or may suffer from conditions that affect their vision like glaucoma or macular degeneration, and have difficulty perceiving content that is too small, that doesn’t scale, or is low contrast. Here are some great low-vision examples.

To get a good sense of how assistive technologies can help in these cases, check out this demo of the very cool ZoomText screen magnifier, which can also change color contrast, create cross-hairs or a giant circle on your mouse pointer, and highlight cursor focus or active area focus.

Some people, like legally blind student Kim Russell, are using ZoomText at 12–14x magnification to navigate your site. That’s huge.

There are a lot of font and color do’s and don’ts to keep in mind when you’re designing your pages and/or when you’re considering that extra small, low-contrast text. Check the resources section for a lot more interesting tools and details beyond the do’s and don’ts listed here.

Text size and color do’s and don’ts

• Don’t use text as an image. When possible use actual text rather than text graphics to avoid pixelation when these text images are enlarged.
• Don’t rely solely on color to portray information. Users should be able to understand the content if all colors were removed. If link text is indicated only by the fact that it’s red, red-sensitive colorblind users may not see the links. Underlines on links are more visible, regardless of link color.
• Do maximize the contrast of text. This includes logo text and text in images when possible. Use color contrast tools to find good foreground-to-background contrast of at least 4.5:1 for small text and 3:1 for large text. For example, #757575 is the lightest grey that is accessible on a white background.
• Do use relative font sizes vs absolute. Sizing fonts by relative percent or em sizes can allow for better resizing than absolute sizing via pixels or points.
• Do use readable fonts: Try to stay away from cursive, fantasy (decorative), and monospace fonts (ex: Courier), and stick closer to native serif and sans-serif family fonts, utilizing as few different font faces as possible for continuity.

Links and anchor text

Screen reader users often tab through a page to skim the page by its links. The link anchor text is announced at each instance, also announcing “link” along with the anchor text, and the user can hit enter to follow any link in focus.

Descriptive and informative links

Links with descriptive anchor text are a win for search engines and screen readers. When the link describes what it is pointing to, it provides context to both, telling screen reader users tabbing through links what the link points to and, for SEO, providing context as to what the destination page is about and potentially helping that destination rank for that phrase or topic.

Providing context with links can be helpful for screen readers as well. Check out the video below of navigating this example of a webpage created to show bad accessibility. The first logo link is pretty amusing, but also notice the [image description] links, the MORE>> links that don’t provide any context and aren’t connected to the articles that they’re visually connected to on the page, and the infamous “click here” and “read more” links, a familiar downer for SEOs.

Now compare that to this video of a properly created version of the same webpage, navigating much more smoothly through it via headers and links:

And just because you have to see this one to believe it, here’s an example of navigating through the links on my favorite accessibility horror story website:

Avoid pseudo links and buttons

While this isn’t necessarily an SEO overlap, it’s a vast problem for accessibility that is worth calling out in this article. Using the correct markup to create links and buttons is important to make sure those links and buttons are clickable using assistive technologies. The simple rule is to use links to navigate to other places and buttons to initiate an action, and do not use <span> or <div> for these cases as they are not the proper markup and may not work.

Karl Groves has a great writeup on the differences, with some examples and why they’re problematic.

Breadcrumb links

SEOs like our breadcrumb links because, well, they’re links. And they’re keyword-rich. But to screen readers, the absence of context around breadcrumb links can be confusing.

Consider the hidden text methods we looked at earlier to provide a little extra context to screen readers like the text "you are here":

Listen for the hidden “you are here” in the video below, tabbing through the WebAIM invisible content page.

Link anchor text do’s and don’ts

• Don’t keyword stuff your links. Let’s say you have a Seattle-focused website with an article announcing the opening of a new coffee shop. You spam the article every chance possible with linked phrases like “coffee shop” and “Seattle coffee shop” and “coffee shop in Seattle” that all link to the coffee shop website. This article is no fun to read for anyone, sighted or not. Don’t do it.
• Do create descriptive links. When you’re using a screen reader you can tab just through the links on the page. If all of the links say “here,” it’s not very useful for someone using a screen reader who is trying to find a link on the page to something specific.
• Do use proper link and button markup. Divs and spans are not links or buttons, and empty <a> anchors without an href attribute or with an empty hashtag destination <a href=”#”> are all potentially problematic.
• Do consider explaining breadcrumb links. Consider hiding a bit of explanatory text offscreen, like “you are here,” before your breadcrumb links for screen readers.

Resources and tools:

If you know of other good tips or resources, please share with us in the comments.

Text formatting

• Nice article with steps to use color contrast tools and create palette examples
• W3C Minimum Contrast
• ContrastRebellion.com - examples of low contrast & high contrast text & general spread-the-word awareness that contrast matters
• WebAIM Color Contrast Checker web-based tool
• Great low vision examples
• WebAIM: fonts for accessibility

Hidden text

• Techniques for hiding text
• Clip Your Hidden Content For Better Accessibility
• Tool to experiment with CSS clipper
• HTML5 Accessibility Chops: hidden and aria-hidden
• WCAG Contrast Checker browser extension for Firefox
• Color Contrast Analyzer browser extension for Chrome’
• WebAIM: Invisible Content

Links and anchor text

• W3C: Providing link text that describes the purpose of a link for anchor elements
• Links and Hypertext
• Links are not buttons. Neither are DIVs and SPANs

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Supercharge Your Online Marketing Skills: New Training and Workshops from Moz Academy!

Posted by rachelgooodmanmoore

[Estimated read time: 8 minutes]

Do you suffer from average ROI and low-to-moderate page optimization scores? Do you feel like your SEO has lost its spark? Have you sensed there’s something “missing” from your digital marketing strategy? If this sounds like you or someone you know, then have I got some good news for you:

Announcing Moz’s new and improved workshops and training!

Whoa! Let's check it out!

If you’ve been looking for a way to improve your marketing strategy and get better results for you or your clients, then Moz’s new training and workshops could be the solution for you.

Great! Wait... what?

Chris Pratt

Great question, reader and Chris. Training and workshop sessions are comprehensive, in-depth, interactive classes designed to help you unleash your inner marketing super power. Every class comes coupled with activities like conducting a full website audit, competitive research exercises, keyword brainstorms, and more. Sound like fun? You bet it does. Almost as much fun as these guys are having:

Training AND workshops? What’s the difference?

Glad you asked. Here’s the run-down on what workshops and training are all about:

Workshops are small group classes lead by a member of the Moz Academy team. They’re open to both Moz subscribers and non-subscribers alike (though it helps to have a Moz subscription or trial), and cover best practices and real-world applications for topics like website audits, keyword research, content marketing, and more.

Not just a one-sided webinar, these sessions are meant to be interactive and participants have numerous opportunities to ask questions and dig deeper. What’s more: every student who attends a workshop will leave with a custom worksheet, audit, or other interactive tool.

Access to worksheets and other in-class activities are included in the price of each workshop.

Custom training is just that: fully customized one-on-one or small group training sessions for organizations who want specialized, focused attention from Moz trainers. Custom training curricula can be designed around whatever SEO and traffic generation topics YOU want to learn about, and individual training sessions are customized to your unique business and industry. Prefer to learn in person, in a real classroom setting? Ask if we can come to you!

The best part of both training AND workshops? You’ll leave each session with not only more know-how, but also an actionable plan for how you can improve your strategy moving forward.

Paid training?! From Moz?!

One of the other things that separates these workshops and trainings from other web-based content Moz has provided in the past: they’re paid. We feel these trainings offer a unique experience for attendees that’s worth the investment, but this is, admittedly, a different route for us. To that end, I wanted to provide some transparency as to why we’ve chosen to offer paid training.

The first (and biggest) reason why we decided to go the paid training route? Customers asked for it. Here are a few examples:

“Does Moz offer Professional Services?”

“We are seeking your support and consultancy on what needs to be done on our website in order to rank higher. If that will cost extra, we will pay. Please advise.”

“How much [would it cost] for me to ask you a lot of questions for an hour? I know you guys are the best...would like to do it on the phone...a conference call would be best.”

Despite requests like these, we’d always shied away from offering paid education because of the vast number of free resources we already offer. With educational materials like the Moz Blog, Whiteboard Fridays, our Beginner's Guides, and beyond, we weren’t sure a paid option would be valuable or useful for users like you.

But as comprehensive as Moz’s free resources may be, they all share two things in common: 1.) They’re self-guided learning tools and 2.) many are one-size-fits-all. Let’s dive into each one of those a bit deeper:

An alternative to self-guided learning

While self-guided learning is great for some, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution for all learning styles. Depending on how you learn best, self-serve resources to organize, peruse, and internalize at your own pace can either be the greatest thing since sliced bread or the greatest hurdle to actually learning something new.

To ensure we have a great option for everyone who wants to learn how to get more traffic, we created comprehensive paid trainings that combine an engaging experience with a hands-on activity to help attendees apply the topic at hand to solve a real life pain-point for their organizations.

From a learning modality perspective, this means we’re able to provide resources for all types of learners — even those who learn best from actually doing an activity at hand.

When one-size-fits-all education isn’t enough

Best practices are just that — the best practice to employ for most organizations in most scenarios. But many organizations have their own nuances and specific business cases — and for those folks, one-size-fits-all education and strategy shop talk isn’t always going to address the underlying issue or provide the best solution.

And sometimes, you may feel like this user:

...I know I have, more times than I can count.

To provide a solution for those who feel like one-size-fits-all education isn’t enough for their organization, our custom training option allows us to tailor a unique education program to your specific needs, use cases, and business.

At the end of the day, we believe the live interaction with our trainers and hands-on activities in each session make workshops a whole new ballgame when it comes to education from Moz. We also believe that the depth of instruction and take-home collateral they provide is more than worth the investment — training packages are custom-priced, and workshops are $79-per-seat early-bird pricing and $99-per-seat regular pricing.

Who are Moz training and workshops for?

Come one, come all! Anyone looking to refine their marketing strategy — specifically as it relates to SEO and getting found online — will find a session with their name on it. While most of our current workshop content is focused towards users with advanced beginner-to-intermediate skill levels, we’ll soon be diving deep and creating content for all levels of expertise. Since our training sessions are fully custom, they can be tailored to match you and your team’s skill level.

Some other folks who might get the most bang for their buck from Moz Academy:

• Marketers looking to refine their skills and dive deeper
• Agencies interested in providing more in-depth audits and insight to clients
• Organizations looking to expand their capabilities
• Companies who’ve brought on new employees who need training
• Intern-training program creators
• Marketers who have seen stagnant or lackluster results and want to supercharge their strategies

This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means — and it isn’t meant to be. Why? Because these classes weren’t designed to fill a specific use case: rather, we created them with a specific persona in mind. That persona is someone who wants to constantly push themselves to dive deeper, learn more, and do better marketing.

Why Moz Academy?

All GIFs aside, we’re incredibly excited to share these courses with you because we think they’re going to help marketers from all walks of life supercharge their skills and take their strategies to the next level. Instead of only skimming the surface about big-picture best practices and theoretic applications, group workshop and custom training attendees have a chance to dig deep into the details of SEO and inbound marketing strategy and really get their hands dirty.

Here’s what a couple recent workshop attendees have had to say:

“...the Keyword Planning Worksheet — holy moly that thing is awesome. I'll definitely be using that over and over again.”

“Presenter was very knowledgable and this could easily have filled many more hours. Great overview to get started with audits using Moz but also third party tools.”

“The technical insights into robots.txt were super helpful — really, the entire workshop was really well done!”

“The presenter did a phenomenal job — everything was super clear, engaging, and easy to apply.”

Learn more about what we cover in each of these sessions or see what’s coming up over at the Moz workshops and training home.

Current topics offered

We currently offer workshops covering four topics:

• Performing website audits
• Keyword research strategy
• Content marketing
• Gaining the competitive edge

Looking for something a little more tailored to your organization’s specific needs and interests? Our custom training curricula have covered topics like:

• Link building
• Video marketing
• Identifying your target audience
• Growing your keyword footprint
• Local search optimization

“That’s great, but what about a class on _____?”

A class on what, you say? Let us know in comments section of this post what sessions you’d like to see! While we currently offer our four flagship workshops, we’re ultimately building the program to encompass a course on everything that goes into a comprehensive traffic generation strategy from start to finish.

If you’re looking for instruction about a particular topic sooner rather than later, drop us a line and let us know a little bit more about what you’re looking for, by when, and for whom — we’d be happy to help provide some custom training if it makes sense for you.

What’s happening to the free videos currently available on Moz Academy?

Nothing, for now. We plan on keeping the free video trainings available for a few more months, but will begin phasing them out later this year. We’ll make sure to provide plenty of advance warning before we do so, though.

Where are we going from here?

Ultimately, we’ll be offering several “tracks” of content that will serve as home to lessons a wide variety of SEO topics (some mentioned above) and at all skill levels. We’d also like to expand just how interactive our courses are (Codeacademy and Treehouse are great inspirations), as well as make it easier for current and future session attendees to connect with each other. We have quite a few other tricks up our sleeves, but you’ll just have to keep an eye on the program to see what we’re up to next!

Interested in learning more about Moz workshops or custom training packages? There’s no time like the present! Get started:

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Google’s next mobile-friendly update will include page speed

The speed of mobile pages isn’t currently used as a ranking factor by Google, but that will change with the next mobile friendly update. 

At the Search Marketing Summit in Sydney today, and reported by Jennifer Slegg, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes confirmed that page speed would be a factor in the next mobile update.

Illyes wouldn’t be pinned down to a date, but it seems we’re looking at a matter of months. Google has only recently updated its mobile algorithm, but there’s more to come.

It also fits with the pattern of Google focusing on the user experience in its mobile updates. It has focused on factors such as small text, links too close together, and intrusive app download ads.

This is no massive surprise, as Google’s introduction of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) shows its concern about page speed on mobile.

Slow sites reduce conversions and traffic, faster sites increase them, as these stats on page speed show.

So how will it rank sites according to page speed? Well, the Page Speed Insights tool seems the obvious answer. Looks like we may have some work to do ;)

The lesson is clear though: its not enough merely to have a mobile friendly site, but businesses need to work hard to ensure that it performs as well as it can across a range of factors.

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Google Still Working on Separate Mobile Search Index

Google is still working on their mobile search index, something Google first confirmed last year, although we haven’t heard much about it for a year or so.  The mobile index would be completely separate from the desktop index and would be for searches done on mobile only. Why is Google working on a mobile only […]

The post Google Still Working on Separate Mobile Search Index appeared first on The SEM Post.

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Next Mobile Friendly Update Includes Page Speed; Coming in Months

At Search Marketing Summit Sydney today, Gary Illyes confirmed that page speed will be a factor in the next mobile friendly update.  Google has long talked about wanting to make page speed a mobile friendly factor, but this is the first time someone from Google has confirmed that it is actually coming. I also asked Illyes […]

The post Next Mobile Friendly Update Includes Page Speed; Coming in Months appeared first on The SEM Post.

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4 Ways Copywriting Can Boost Your E-commerce Conversion Rates

Posted by ksaleh

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 Moz, Inc.

[Estimated read time: 8 minutes]

Your website's copy is far more important than you realize.

Besides design, copy forms the foundation of your brand. How you describe yourself and your products leaves a palpable impression on your customers. Whether customers think of your brand as bold, futuristic, quirky, or cute depends largely on your copy.

Web copy is also crucial for conveying product information. Your customers want to know how your product works and how it will change their lives.

Unfortunately, far too many e-commerce stores spend hours optimizing their website's design and layout but completely skip over the copy.

The result? Poor conversion rates.

The relationship between copy and conversion rates

If you're running an e-commerce store, a SaaS startup, or a marketing agency, the three of your biggest challenges are:

1. Informing visitors about the store’s products and their unique features and benefits
2. Evoking emotions that drive action and persuade the visitor
3. Fostering a long-lasting relationship by emphasizing the brand’s values (and how they align with their customers’ values)

You'll realize that you can meet all of these challenges through smart copywriting. In fact, it isn't unusual for improving a website's copy to increase its conversion rates by 2x, 3x, or even 4x.

For example:

• FreckleTime increased the conversion rate for its homepage by 2.4x simply by changing its copy.
• Invesp increased conversion rates for BlogTalk Radio and Oreilly by over 90% by focusing on copy and value proposition in the copy throughout the site.
• Encyclopedia Britannica increased conversion rates by 103% by changing its sales page copy.

There is a distinct, direct relationship between copy and conversion rates. Better copy, whether it’s on landing pages or product descriptions, leads to better conversion rates.

The obvious question is: how can you improve your e-commerce copy?

Here are four actionable tactics you can use right away to get better conversions.

1. Write for your target personas

Sketching out a target customer profile based on your brand's personas will help you craft laser-targeted, high-converting copy.

Nearly all your customers will belong to one or more of these four persona types:

• Logical persona: This persona type is logical, methodical, and detail-oriented. A customer with a logical persona will carefully scrutinize your offer before hitting the "Buy" button. He will also shop around for better deals. Roughly 40–45% of the audience falls into this category.
• Impulsive persona: An impulsive persona type is spontaneous, risk-oriented, and optimistic. This persona is more prone to making quick decisions and will focus on the benefits when buying. Roughly 30–35% of the audience would be characterized as an impulsive persona.
• Caring persona: A caring persona is concerned deeply about the well-being of others. This persona will consider your offer only when it helps others as well. Instead of looking at the product and its features, those having caring personas will also browse through your About Us page to see what kind of company you run. Roughly 15–20% of the population falls into this category.
• Aggressive persona: An aggressive persona is rational and focused on self-improvement. This persona holds herself to a high standard of integrity and will expect the same from you. Roughly 5–7% of the population has this persona.

How to write for each customer persona

What kind of copy you’ll use for each persona will depend largely on what category the persona falls into. A logical persona type will respond very differently to your copy than an impulsive persona type.

Try following some of these guidelines for your persona-types:

Logical persona

• Emphasize features
• Include extensive details, especially of the technology behind your products
• Avoid fluff and vague language

Example: Take a look at the product descriptions on Canada-Goose.com. This is a brand that sells expensive but high-quality outerwear for extreme cold weather conditions.

Canada Goose customers care about the quality and construction of the clothes. The copy reflects this, focusing on features and underlying technology.

Impulsive persona

• Focus on benefits
• Use rich imagery and power words
• Weave a story around your product

Example: Read the product descriptions on the J Peterman catalog. This brand sells the story behind each product.

The details are sparse and the copy uses rich imagery and metaphors to appeal to its target audience.

Caring persona

• Show how your products benefit others, both within product descriptions and on unique pages (About Us, mission statement, etc.).
• Emphasize the environmental or social benefits of your products.

Example: On Patagonia.com, each product page has a separate section detailing the product’s supply chain. This is in line with Patagonia’s mission statement that promotes sustainable living and environmentally-friendly policies.

Aggressive persona

• Focus on how the product will help the customer improve himself/herself
• Emphasize the underlying technology, especially how it relates to performance improvements
• Focus on your store or your brand’s heritage and history to establish credibility

Example: Most fitness brands fall under this category (see the copy for Keen, a brand of hiking footwear):

The copy lists out the technology used in the shoe and tells the reader how it improves performance.

Ideally, you want to use copy that targets all of these personas on every page. If that’s not possible, you should at least try to figure out the dominant customer persona for each product or category, and use the appropriate copy.

2. Use power words and action words

Staggering. Smashing. Stunning.

These are all examples of power words — words that evoke strong emotions in your readers.

Power words are rarely used in everyday speech (recall the last time you used “staggering” or “sensational” in a casual conversation). This makes them stand out all the more when used in e-commerce copy.

Using power words is the easiest way to elevate your copy beyond the ordinary. A sprinkle of these words can turn boring product descriptions into emotion-generating copy that turns browsers into customers, customers into fans.

See how Firebox uses power words in its product descriptions:

These simple words turn ordinary copy into something far more compelling.

So what are power words like?

Here’s a short list of power words that are particularly useful for e-commerce copywriting tasks.

Amazing	Audacious	Authentic	Backed	Best-Selling
Banned	Breathtaking	Crazy	Caution	Cheerful
Crush	Cheap	Certified	Censored	Controversial
Confession	Dumb	Defying	Delight	Dare
Discount	Exciting	Epic	Eye-opening	Explosive
Extra	Economical	Fortune	Free	Frenzy
Frugal	Forbidden	Faithful	Fearless	Flirt
Grateful	Greatest	Guaranteed	Hack	Happy
Hero	Hope	Hidden	Inexpensive	Incredible
Ironclad	Insider	Joy	Jaw-dropping	Jackpot
Jubilant	Looming	Legendary	Luxurious	Lifetime
Little-known	Magic	Mind-blowing	Miraculous	Massive
Marked-down	Money	Mystery	Naughty	No obligations
No questions asked	Official	Outlaw	Pluck	Provocative
Pummel	Passionate	Profit	Prize	Private
Proven	Protected	Priceless	Risk-free	Remarkable
Rich	Reduced	Researched	Refund	Reliable
Secret	Select	Secure	Savings	Skyrocket
Soaring	Surging	Smashing	Staggering	Stunning
Surprising	Tank	Targeted	Triumphant	Tantalizing
Thrilling	Tested	Unauthorized	Uplifting	Unconditional
Victory	Value	Verified	Whopping	Wonderful

Use action words

Power words evoke emotion, but they don’t drive readers to take action.

For that, you need to use action words in your copy.

These are simply words that describe an action: add, act, take, get, etc.

Let’s take another look at the Firebox product description page:

Action words make your copy sound more energetic and active. They also subtly tell the reader to take some action.

You don’t have to use them excessively. Just pepper them in whenever you want to hammer in a feature/benefit or get your readers to take some action.

Here's a list of some action words you can use in many different types of copywriting tasks:

Add	Act	Buy	Break	Bite
Begin	Collect	Catch	Call	Create
Choose	Drink	Drive	Draw	Eat
Exude	Feel	Find	Fly	Grow
Go	Give	Guard	Hold	Hurry
Jump	Know	Kick	Love	Listen
Locate	Make	Measure	Multiply	Mix
Print	Prepare	Play	Pull	Push
Read	Run	Ride	Ring	Shout
Sell	Shake	Study	See	Speak
Say	Take	Think	Text	Try
Taste	Tell	Test	Understand

3. Use the right formatting

Your website visitors don’t read your pages.

They scan.

According to eye-tracking studies conducted by Nielsen, people scan e-commerce pages in an F-shaped pattern:

That is, they first look to the left column, then to the right, then drag their eyes down the page.

This means that users won’t read your copy — however remarkable it may be — unless it's formatted correctly.

Follow these guidelines for improved e-commerce copy formatting:

• Follow an information hierarchy. The most important content should go in the first couple of paragraphs. Less important information should be further down the page.
  
  Take a look at this product page on NewEgg.com. It lists the most important things about the product, including availability, seller name and key features, at the top of the page:

• Follow a two-column layout, with the product image on the left and critical product details on the right. People are already used to this convention and will naturally look at the image on the left first, followed by the text on the right.
  
  Overstock.com uses this layout on its product pages:

• Use bullet points for the text to the right of the image (i.e., the most important content). You can use paragraphs for longer product descriptions.
  
  For example, Amazon mentions each product's top features in the form of a bullet list at the top of the page:

• Use information-rich headers to organize the content (such as key features and sizing information). Users will scan these to find what they’re looking for as they scroll down the page.
  
  NewEgg organizes this information in separate tabs:

BestBuy's product pages follow a similar structure, but with even better content organization:

• Use keywords in your copy. Users will quickly scan your copy to figure out details about your product. Adding keywords such as size and price will help them scan your page faster.
  
  Great examples of this can be found on Target's product pages, including this one:

Keep these tips in mind when you write your copy. Otherwise, you just might end up creating impeccable content that no one reads.

4. Don’t forget unique pages

Your homepage, About Us page, mission statement, and the like comprise your site's unique pages.

Unlike product or category pages (which usually follow a template), each of these pages has distinct content, copy, and design.

Optimizing the copy on your unique pages can have a noticeable impact on conversion rates. For one, these pages help customers understand you and your brand. If you can describe your brand in a way that resonates with your target customers, you’ll be able to sell more products at better prices.

Tell a story through your unique pages

When writing copy for unique pages, the standard rules apply: Use power words and evocative imagery.

At the same time, you also want to make sure that your copy weaves a story about your brand.

ThinkGeek does the same by boldly stating its manifesto on its About page:

Emphasize your brand’s history and values

Another way to use copywriting to improve brand perception is to share your brand’s history and values on your unique pages.

For example, Patagonia.com has a separate page for its mission statement:

Tell your brand's story

Your brand is more than just a collection of products. There are real people with real stories behind the business who come together to create all your amazing products.

Highlighting these on a separate "Our Story" page is a great idea.

For example, take a look at how Saddleback Leather does it:

Whatever tactic you use to emphasize your brand’s history and its values, the copy on these pages should reflect your brand.

Key takeaways

Copywriting and conversion rate are inherently related. Good web copy is closely correlated with good conversion rates. Using power words, appropriate formatting, and persona-targeted copywriting can help you drastically improve the copy of your e-commerce website and, by proxy, its conversion rates.

Has your brand made a commitment to enhancing conversion rates with effective copywriting?

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