The Business of Digital Podcast

The guys wrap up the year by covering some of the more popular episodes, making some 2020 predictions and seeing how well or badly they did with their 2019 predictions.

Mat kicks off the review with talking about podcasting and for those interested in podcasting he drops a mention to our Podcasting Guide.

2019 Most Popular Podcast Episodes

While we likely missed some, Dave quickly went through some handy data to give you a list of some our more popular episodes. If you missed them or perhaps forgot what they were about feel free to go back and listen!

Episode 123 – Interview with Former FTC Commissioner & Chairwoman Maureen OhlhausenEpisode 108 – What is best for you – Blog, Microsite or Other?Episode 107 – Is the Influencer Bubble Bursting?Episode 106 – Botched SEO Migration Case Study100th Episode Series Kickoff and all the episodes that were part of that seriesEpisode 85 - How to Get Booked on PodcastsEpisode 79 – Management Styles of Teams & The Super Mario EffectEpisode 78 – Google and Antitrust

2019 Digital Predictions

In 2018 we wrapped up the year with our predictions and both Dave and Mat had at least one correct (go us!).

Mat was correct about people answering questions moreDave was correct about AI & Paid Search

Of course we were pretty vague but hey, we will take it.

2019 Personal Faves

Mat's was E123 – Interview with Former FTC Commissioner & Chairwoman Maureen OhlhausenDave: the legal episodes we have done in the past such as the one Mat said, Google Antitrust w/ Steve Cernak and Blogging Legally in 2018 with Ruth Carter

2020 Predictions (Kind of)

Mat:More people (kids especially) moving to social networks like Reddit and TikTokPelaton and Aviation Gin ads will be talked about and find their way into every deck at conferences one way or anotherSome agencies are going to struggle with the change comingPrivacy and legal ramifications for things like CCPA, ADA and moreMat predicts more Conference PopUp events.Dave:CCPA, GSPR and California's ADA requirements are all going to hit or be bigger in 2020Google, Amazon, and Facebook will not be broken up but there will be more scrutiny around Ads and the 3 in general.Political Ads in FB and Twitter will be in the news more and impact us.Privacy - YouTube, Instagram and so on will also blow up and also impact marketers.

Join as the topic of junk data in, junk data out and how you can mislead your business descisions with bad analytics data is discussed.

Analytics Conversion Data Gap

Mat kicks the episode off with a great example to set the tone and topic of what the guys dig into. Visits from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, etc. can change from day to day and month to month but what really matters is your leads and sales.

Rankings for keywords come and go but what you need to focus on is the value of that traffic.

Why Your Conversion Rate is Wrong

This episode was inspired by Unbounce's post The Simple Reason Why Your B2B Lead Gen Conversion Rates Are Completely Wrong. To quote the post as it gives a great example:

If you spend $1,000 on a lead gen campaign and get 250 leads, that’s a cost per lead of $4, right? So wrong. - Unbounce

What are Issues with Analytics Conversion Data?

Oh so many things. But to quickly answer that Dave digs in with some examples:

Someone fills out the form multiple times in a visit.Someone fills out multiple forms on a visit.Someone fills out a form with junk data.Bad phone numbers.Fake email addresses.Duplicate leads - they filled it out last week, month, year, etc.Fake names or other informationQA leads showing up in Analytics

Your analytics will say that all of these leads and form submissions are valid but your CRM will likely scrub of filter these and drop most into the junk box. So while your Analytics may tell you that you rocked a day with 25 form submissions but in reality you had 25 - X. If X is 12 your conversion rate is 50% of what your Analytics tells you.

Paid Data Conversion Data Issues

The real downside can be when the AI and Google think that a Campaign/Ad Group/Keyword is crushing it when those conversions it is seeing are really all garbage or are significantly less. (Yes there are ways around this but in general...).

Analytics is Great but Not Perfect

For those that ever have dug into Omniture, Google Analytics or any solution you know that there are issues with the data at some level. One example that Dave mentions is Social Media related data and trying to bucket it. Annie covered this some years ago with Why You Should Keep Social and Referral Data Separate in Google Analytics in great detail so check it out.

Junk Data In, Junk Data Out

Few of us are Google Analytics experts (or Omniture experts, or name your tool) and that often results in bad setups. Dave digs into a number of things commonly seen or missed rather in setups he sees.

Not filtering internal IPsNot filtering Dev/StagingNot filtering botsOnly one profileEvents poorly setupConversions poorly setupSo many other things that can throw off your data.

How to Fix Bad Conversion Data

Ask questions. Work with experts and test your UTM codes and setup. Test and QA updates and your site and remember to also test your Analytics when you test your code. Internally come together to make sure that everyone is using the same data source for leads, sales and conversions.

Use your Analytics conversion data as directional. Use your CRM and internal data for actual decisions and any reports or dashboards.

In wrapping up the episode Mat walked through a great example of how people internally saw 47 conversions but the real number was 2. So what happened? Listen and see!!!

Dave digs into a number of SEO tools that are "newer" and gives some pricing and background on each of them along with use cases too.

On a rainy day it was Dave's turn to do a dive into tools as Mat just did one all about Instagram Tools. So give a listen or check out the quick summaries below of some "newer" free and paid tools that you might find interesting in your day to day SEO work.

Quarterly Review of Tools

Even if none of these tools are for you a great suggestion by Matt is to do a quarterly or monthly or at least a yearly review of what tools you are using. You may have someone that signed up for a tool and left and no one knows the login or that you are still paying $19 or $99 a month for it some 6 months later. Ask your team what tools they use, don't use and want to use and then adjust your budget and tools to save money or better utilize what you already pay for!

Inlinks.net

The Inlinks tool can crawl 20 to all of your pages and help you optimize your internal links, schema, and optimize around semantic search. For 20 pages you pay NOTHING. That is the free plan but from there the costs go from $39 and up depending on how many pages you have.

Server Headers

This is a free SEO tool thanks to Mr. Ryan Jones to quickly check what the response of a web page is but also it checks the Schema, common SEO issues, does a Lighthouse check, N-Gram of your content and a number of other things. The tool does check quite a few things so it can take a minute for it to gather everything up and respond to you so just give it a second. While you are waiting for this or any of the tools listed in the show, head over to WTFSEO and read some of the posts.

Featured Snippet Tool

*Quick Update* - Since we recorded this (literally a day after) the UI and pricing has been updated for this. Instead of credits as was mentioned on the podcast there is now just one time fee where you get X reports.

The Featured Snippet Tool from the Internet Marketing Ninjas is handy for those that want to find opportunities for their site of keywords they already rank for but do not have the featured snippet. Recently Dave went through and used this tool for a client and quickly was able to give them 3-4 low hanging opportunities where they were in the Top 3 spots organically but did NOT have the featured snippet.

ZipTopic

The pricing is $19.99 a month for unlimited reports or sign up for an annual contract and save some. This tool might be seen as similar to Inlinks but it really isn't. This tool will take your keyword and target URL and dig into the topics, keywords and other metrics for pages in the Top 10 for your target keyword.

Not only will the tool suggest your gaps of topics but will give you examples of what pages are covering those gaps well. So if you are into content briefs or working with your writers to optimize content then take a look at this tool.

NewzDash

NewzDash is a fully data driven News SEO Tool that may be of interest even to those not into News SEO (like Dave and Matt). Pricing ranges from a free trial up to more of an Enterprise level of $599 a month.

The reports you get include Top News Publishers (looking to get PR on your industry?), Competitive Analysis, Publisher Stats, News Trends (news jacking?), Twitter and more. When combined with MuckRack and Google Trends it might be an interesting way to give your writers ideas and insights into topics to dig into.

Also Asked

AlsoAsked.com will take your search term and show you what other questions “people also ask”.  Is this like AnswerThePublic? No as that tool uses Suggest data, not "people also ask". It currently though is free like AnswerThePublic so dig into both to help you with your content for free.

Keywords Everywhere

Not initially on the list to cover but mentioned by Dave while talking about Also Asked. This tool recently went from FREE to paid where you purchase credits. It does have a Chrome and Firefox browser extension so that is a handy plus. If you are curious about this tool it is at Keywords Everywhere. And do note that it is .com,

Inspired by a recent talk and 3 other things the guys dig into why we should ask more questions, listen more and really question best practices and test them ourselves.

Missing Obvious Clues

As we said in the opening, there are a number of possible names for this episode but we think we picked the "best" one - or maybe we didnt.

In the episode we misspoke when we said Facebook's CFO as it appears it was Paypal's former CFO that was having issues this past week with Bank of America. That said, Google and Facebook do often close advertising accounts with no or little notice and often gives little direction as to why it can be frustrating for business owners and agencies.

Google Said ...""... says the Client

Those of us that work at agencies or as consultants so often hear someone say "well Google said we should do X for Y" but so often the example or specific case that someone from Google was addressing really is not at all similar to the one you are working with your client on.

Should I follow best time to post studies?

No, no you shouldn't. Test when to push your social media posts live. Test when to publish your blog posts. Test when to publish your podcast episodes. Test which and when to pay to promote them on Facebook. Test how long your content should be or short. Use studies and "best practices" as a starting point but test things for your company and your industry as they will likely be different (and very different in some cases).

Stop and Listen. Ask More Questions

When you are talking to someone in your company or with a client we need to stop and listen. Marketing is a puzzle, we need to ask lots of questions.

When your coworkers start talking about a new goal, campaign or project don't just ask what their KPI they care about is but go deeper into what they are trying to achieve and how they are going about it.

Ask more questions. Question their motives. Ask what they are trying to do and where they really are trying to get long term. Keep asking questions and listen to what they say and don't say.

There are Unknowns. Lots of Them.

Matt digs into a recent ad campaign that had little money and some mocked but the number of news agencies and people that constantly were talking about it recently have to make you stop and think - maybe this was the goal? Maybe they just wanted to keep it simple and thought maybe they would get free press. Maybe its purely an accident - we don't know.

Dave talks through how we often look to copy all the features and layout of what someone is doing with a landing page. Just because company X is sitting at #1 on Bing/Google for paid ads, it doesn't mean that that page is converting really well and we shouldn't just blindly follow them and copy things. We don't know anything behind that page or campaign and need to test things on our own.

Thomas Ballantyne joins to dig into aggregating reviews, responding to reviews and how to best use customer service and reviews to improve your business.

Mat and Dave are joined by Thomas to talk pest control, reviews, Local SEO and how he got his start with SEO and reviews.

Thomas' 3 Step System for Getting Reviews

It really is a simple system or list of things that any company can do.

Don't suckFigure out a system to ask for reviewsMake the system for your customer easy to do and follow

How have Online Reviews Evolved?

Mat asks a pretty broad question and Thomas breaks it down into a few stories and examples.

Because Thomas and Bulwark started collecting reviews so early and so well they ran into issues with Google. Thomas even had to talk to Matt Cutts about it because at one point Google cleared every review that they had received.

When asked by Mat if anything has changed between 2007ish and 2019 a number of things came to mind for Thomas.

They now ask for reviews on their own site. The goal is to have their own unique reviews on their site.Doing this also allowed for them to monitor employees to make sure that reviews that were coming in were honest.

Incentivizing Reviews

As this is always a hot topic it seems with every platform the guys dug in a bit into Yelp, Google, being a Local Guide for Google and a bit more.

How to Deal with Negative Reviews

Thomas quotes a book and some research that suggests that someone that leaves a Hotel (or business) happy actually rates the experience lower (on average) than someone that ran into issues and had them solved during a stay/visit.

Thomas suggests a book that helped mold how they deal with Negative Reviews. It is called "Satisfaction: How Every Great Company Listens to the Voice of the Customer".Thomas' book suggestion

So if someone had a bad experience, it should give you another reason to make sure that customers are taken care of. If you haven't checked out our podcast on Customer Service SEO do it after you finish this one.

Look for trends. Thomas has data and dashboards that he and his team uses to look for trends in negative reviews to help them mine and fix possible issues that may be in their internal processes.

Review Studies

Thomas mentioned a study but here are some others including the one by Northwestern University that dig into industry averages and why having 100% of your ratings be 5 stars is likely a bad thing.

You Don’t Want A 5-Star ReviewGoogle Reviews Study: How Many Reviews Do Local Businesses Need?Net Promoter Score by Industry