The Importance of User Experience in Search: An Interview With Roger Montti by @brentcsutoras | Dramel Notes

At Pubcon 2015 in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to speak with Roger Montti, aka Martini Buster, about user experience in search.

Users experience is not discussed as often because it’s more objective and less quantifiable than the technical and reporting aspects of SEO — but it’s no less important.

Catch up with what you need to know about user experience in search in the video below:

Here are some key takeaways from the video:

• Mobile search is where user experience matters most, because that’s where people are most likely to abandon your site if it loads to slow, or doesn’t fit on their screen.
• Google’s number one goal is to create the best user experience — it only makes sense that Google would prioritize sites with good UX.
• One of the most important factors right now is page speed. From there, the next most important thing is to make content easily scannable. From there, you should focus on displaying less intrusive ads, and so on until you’re providing the best experience
• It you build your site around creating the best user experience, you can’t go wrong. In addition to rankings, you’ll also earn links, greater reputation, more social shares, and so on.
• When it comes to delighting people and getting people excited about your brand — user experience is at the very top.
• The next step for people who are already interested in improving their user experience is to treat their desktop and mobile experience the same. Instead of segregating each experience you should instead try to provide a consistent experience across all screen.

Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews.

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Common Misconceptions About Facebook Advertising: An Interview With Rocco Baldassarre by @wonderwall7 | Dramel Notes

At Pubcon 2015 in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to speak with Rocco Baldassarre, of Zebra Advertising, about the misconceptions surrounding Facebook advertising.

It’s not just about boosting a post to your existing audience, and leaving it at that. However, that’s what most marketers are doing, Rocco says

See Rocco dispel some of the largest misconceptions about Facebook in the video below:

Here are some key takeaways from the video:

• There’s so many more things you can do what Facebook advertising than simply boosting posts. Boosted posts go out to a limited audience, and you’re missing the opportunity to target behavior, interests, and deeper targeting options.
• One of the best things about Facebook ads is that you can drive cheap clicks that are also high quality.
• Google advertising is better when it comes to making the sale here and now, while Facebook is better for capturing large volumes of new and returning customers.
• When starting with Facebook ads, figure out who your customers are. If your customers can be targeted through lifestyle, then Facebook is an ideal ad platform for your business.
• B2C businesses are generally better suited for Facebook advertising. This is especially true when it comes to the dynamic remarketing capability — where you can target people who have already been on your website.
• Facebook also excels at ad reporting. Reporting is more granular since you can narrow down things like the ages of people who are clicking and not clicking on your ads.
• With this information you can make campaigns more profitable by only having your ads displayed to the types of people most likely to click.
• When it comes to boosted posts, Rocco doesn’t say to forget about them altogether. Instead, Rocco recommends boosting them from the ad manager itself to take advantage of the more advanced targeting options.

Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews.

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How to Scale Content Marketing Needs: An Interview with Dave Snyder of CopyPress by @wonderwall7 | Dramel Notes

At Pubcon 2015 in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to speak with Dave Snyder, CEO of CopyPress, about scaling content. As a business grows its content needs grow along with it. How do you scale your content marketing production to keep up with business growth?

Snyder has worked with large brands with demand for content exceeding tens of thousands of pages. In the video below, he explains how businesses can improve their content marketing production without putting any additional strain on existing resources.

Learn more in the video below:

Here are some key takeaways from the video:

• When companies get into content marketing, particularly big companies, they need to think beyond a blog. Before doing anything, Snyder says to create a full strategy and then produce for that strategy.
• Creating a team to fulfill content creation needs is the greatest challenge right now. Not only finding the people to produce the content, but ensuring that it’s consistently good.
• Snyder recommends creating a style guide for your content, then you can roll more content with greater consistency because it will be based on that style guide. Content marketing is much easier to scale with a style guide, Snyder says.
• Here’s a clear message to big companies: pay your producers correctly. The days of good, cheap content are over. Today, you get what you pay for.
• Quality Assurance (QA) is starting to be offered as a standalone service by some agencies, which is another thing businesses can start to outsource as their content production increases.
• When building your content marketing team, ensure people are adequately trained for the positions they’re being placed in — ideally single disciple fields with an individual point of contact.
• One final piece of Snyder wants business to keep in mind is: start with KPIs first. Don’t rush in to content marketing because you suddenly have a budget for it. Put some thought into what you want to accomplish.

Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews.

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Storytelling in Marketing: An Interview With Warren Whitlock by @lorenbaker | Dramel Notes

At Pubcon 2015 in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to speak with Warren Whitlock, of LimitlessInfluence.com, about storytelling in marketing.

You can’t just market with data alone. You need to use that data to tell a story. A story is what sparks emotion in people and gets them the share it, link to it, and so on.

In the video below, Warren explains how businesses can better incorporate storytelling into their content marketing:

Here are some key takeaways from the video:

• Warren starts off by saying keywords matter still matter, but they should not come before telling a good story.
• Optimization is taking a good story and making sure it fits the medium in which its being published.
• Old school of though used to be to to fulfill a word count while incorporating X-amount of phrases. It’s still easy for SEOs to get carried away with this.
• Search engines ultimately want to present the best information — content that tells the best story while giving searchers what they need tends to rank well.
• Warren offers up a simple strategy for brands: get down to the essence of what the brand needs to tell, tell it in the right away, optimize it for search, see what ends up boosting your KPIs, then create more of that content.
• The best thing to come out of the past 10 years in SEO, Warren says, are the tools available today to facilitate easier content creation.
• Warren gives Amazon as an example a site that is perfectly well optimized. This is particularly notable since 40% of e-commerce searches start on the e-commerce site itself. Warren also commends Amazon for diversifying its traffic through things like its app. It’s now gotten to the point where companies are optimizing for Amazon as well as optimizing for Google.

Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews.

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