The Business of Digital Podcast

Going beyond Keyword Research basics to dig into 201 level topics the guys cover keyword intent, leveraging hashtags, site search and more.

We have already done a number of shows on various Keyword Research topics so if you missed them or want to check them out again here they are:

Unique Ways to Do Keyword ResearchCompetitive Research Beyond Just KeywordsKeyword Tools for Trends and Shopping101 Guide to Writing Blog Posts

So if you want Keyword Research 101, tips on writing blog posts, help with your ecommerce keyword research or to dig into some competitive research beyond keywords - DO check out those past episodes.

Hashtags

What hashtags are similar or competitors using? Look at Twitter and Instagram to get ideas on what people care about.

Leverage them to better optimize your title, description and maybe even give you new ideas for content. Look at the numbers of posts using various hashtags - is it a small number or large number? Use those data points as validation of what keywords people are thinking about.

Matt with his photography is often digging into how and what people are tagging to give him ideas.

Intent

When you have lists of 10,000, 40,000 or even 200,000 or 400,000 like Dave has had for some projects recently it is hard to just sort through so many.

Think of the "intent" of keywords - informational, transactional or navigational. Dave gives some examples of keywords, intents and questions that you can ask.

For SaaS companies that want to rank for "best X software" - sorry but Google isn't likely going to list your product page unless you are the biggest in that space. It is going to show lists of rated/sorted products.

What do people want to do? Learn and be educated? Buy something? Compare something? Think about the intent of the keyword, the content on the site and think about how best to create content that has a chance to rank and help people.

Content Ideas - Where to Find More

Go right now (unless you are sure) and make sure you have Google Analytics set-up to track your site searches. There is gold in that data and lots of FAQ/content ideas that you likely need to add to your site.

Yearly Review

Do you need to review your keyword target lists monthly or quarterly? Maybe if you are in the ecommerce space and have lots of seasonal/product turn over. If you aren't though, once a year or so is likely enough.

Businesses change. Product and service offerings change from time to time. When those things happen for you, take a look at the keyword targets and evaluate what you are going after. Check your content plan and make sure that your new keywords and business priorities are all in line!

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes as always Dave, on the other end. How's it

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:16] going? My friend, I am. It is, it is a rainy here. Oh yes.

I know. You're like going 115 degrees already and it's raining here.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:25] Well, we're not quite at 115. Thank goodness. But, uh, it's coming soon. Well, guys, um, we're going to just jump right into it. We want it to. Um, you know, Dave reminded me that we're approaching, uh, you know, we're, we're coming up to a high number of episodes that we've done.

And it just crazy because I don't know, um, you know, it's, we've been doing this for a long time and you just get into the routine of doing it and, and, uh, you just, you, you tend to forget like where you're at and what you've accomplished and, you know, over three years [00:01:00] and approaching 200 episodes and it's crazy day, but, uh, What we wanted to jump in today with you guys is, um, a little bit more of a high level, uh, keyword research.

We've done keyword research in the past. Um, but it's always good to go over it again, but also we had some ideas that might take it to the next level and, uh, that's where we're really going to jump

Zoom into Data, F1 & Storytelling in this episode that talks through some examples of using data for marketing and business operations.

It is April so it is time for #MDMC down in St. Louis to take place again. For the 4th year Dave is a speaker with this year being virtual again of course.

While Dave's session is going to focus on data from Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console there is a world of data that companies create. This can be true data from sales or from running a business or it could be video and other "data" that is produced by the company that is just waiting to be reused in some fashion.

If you want some more episodes on GSC/Bing Webmaster we got you!

MDMC & Tools for Leveraging Google Search Console DataBing WordPress Plugin, Webmaster Tools & Guidelines W/ Fabrice Canel

Inspiration

Make Your Own Data. Own Your Own Data.

One of the things that F1 Racing does is own the data. In their case they own the data from the cars, they own the data from the cameras on the cars, on the track, near the track, above the track. All of the content, video and just data produced from a race they capture and own.

What do you produce in terms of data and content that you own? How can you better use it to tell your story?How can you better use it to understand your customers?How can you better understand your prospects? Staff?How can you leverage content and data across channels better?

Leveraging Data for Revenue

So not every business is F1 or the NFL but you do create data and content in some way. The new owners of F1 in recent years have started to leverage all that data into new apps or features in the apps, new ways to look and tell stories during races and also have created new revenue streams (gambling) with it.

Imagine using data from your business or website and creating a new revenue stream? Maybe you can too.

We Aren't Just Talking Data Here.

If you are a restaurant and have new menu items, capture the making of that new item. So not only do you make it for a photo shoot but the making of the item IS a photo shoot too.

You can easily reuse it for Social Media or on the website. Not only are you getting new product photos but you are getting content that you can use in multiple ways on multiple platforms for years.

Going back to our episode Bugging Out Over Reviews With Thomas Ballantyne we dug into using review data to look for problem points in their service. This was data from review services or from their CMS that they leveraged not for content but to better their business and their operations.

Pick of the Week

Think back to record stores (also, feel free to go support them!) and how you would walk in and see "Staff Picks".

This is "data" or something that could be used to create content in a digital way.

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have everybody join us on another one of these businesses, digital podcast episodes. If I can talk today, Dave. How's it going?

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:19] It's going hopefully better talking for me than you it's

Matt Siltala: [00:00:22] going like that today.

So, Hey, well, um, and just jumping right into it. Um, I thought this was an interesting one that you had brought up and basically we're, we're gonna talk just everybody knows data in 2021. Um, this idea was sparked in Dave's mind from a video he watched

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:42] thanks to my brother that sent it to me. Thank you, sir.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:46] Well, there you go. Why don't you just, uh, take it from there.

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:49] And, uh, so yeah, he wanted us to go two during business hours, watch a 10 minute video about F1 racing. You you've, you're listening to the correct podcast. [00:01:00] If you had who doesn't love an excuse for that. I know. And if you have no desire to watch anything and do not care about racing, do not care about F1.

Don't even know what F1 racing is. Honestly, I would say sti

When you are not the market leader in your industry creating comparisons to the leader is a tactic. This episode explores a recent example and walks through how you can do it (perhaps differently).

Here is the story that caught Dave's attention Wix Negative Ads Against WordPress Generate Backlash and without it honestly Dave likely (and Mat) wouldn't have even seen the video. Meanwhile if you too haven't watched and want to see what you missed, here it is:

So now that the video and article that spurred this episode is out of the way, what about the rest of the episode? The guys focus more on the idea of going after your competitor and how to do it.

Also if you create something "controversial", the possible free impressions and media coverage (like this podcast) could amplify your content and message for free. So you may make some people mad but get free coverage - the reward/risk to doing such a thing is up to you!- Dave

If you are in the SaaS space and you are NOT creating compare pages go watch this video from Aleyda and her Crawling Mondays series. Matthew Howells-Barby from Hubspot and Jackie Chu from Uber dig into some of the content you need including compare pages. Go give a watch/listen later when you have a chance.

Comparing to The Big Fish

So while you may disagree with the execution in this case by Wix the fact that they are going after the big CMS is just something they should do. Think of the market leaders in any space and then think about where if you are an upstart or smaller fish, where is it easiest to gain market share? From the leader of course!

Google in Search (88% -ish market share in US). Bing and DuckDuckGo have to go after Google and often do over privacy or anything they can.WordPress (30-74% market share depending on source) in CMS. Wix, Squarespace, Drupal, and everyone else are way behind.

Compare Pages

In most industries it does and will make sense for you to look at making pages that compare you to the big fish. If you are a CMS upstart creating Company X vs. WordPress. Company X vs Squarespace. Company X vs. Hubspot. Create a page that is Alternatives to WordPress. Alternatives to Squarespace and so on. People are searching for these types of things and they clearly are looking for whatever it is you sell or do.

Video or Radio Ads vs. Ranking in Search Engines vs. Bidding on Competitor Names

So now that you are convinced that you need to go after the market leader the real question is how best to do it. This episode was spurred on by someone doing a video but there are so many ways to go after the market leader in your space or just some competitor.

Bid on their keywords or brand with PPC.Rank higher on 3rd party sites by paying or having more/better reviews.Creating vs. content or "alternative to" content and going after them through SEOCreate radio, TV or other audio/video content to make the comparison.

In the end how you compare yourself to them is up to you. Do you highlight their flaws? Do you highlight how you are better? Do you do both? Do you start a price war or just stick to features?

How you do that is up to you but be weary of how some might see your videos and ads as is the case with the Wix ad in this case.

Full Episode Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you join us on another one of these businesses, digital podcast episodes, and we are going to jump into it right now. How's it going, Dave?

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:20] We are, I don't know, ask us

positive or negative five days after what's today. We're uh, I actually say we're recording this on Thursday. All of this stuff just happened this week. Is this one's going to go live in three days. So ask me again Monday. All right.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:41] So everybody, what we're going to jump into today. Um, we're

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:46] going to talk about that.

You didn't ask us to talk about. Which is fine.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:48] We're just gonna do it. It's fine. Um, so yes, there's a little video going around in

Over time we forget why we are doing things and documentation, processes and checklists aren't 100% the answer but see how they can help your marketing team.

Old habits are hard to break and new ones can be difficult to start. In the crunch of time at work and life we sometimes forget to do small things (or big things) in the heat of the moment.

Crunched for time to get some code out? Maybe you forget to QA something.Tight deadline for that report? Maybe you forget to look up a data point or validate the dates for the data you pull. Writing something? Maybe you don't go over all of it as closely as you should have.

Dave starts the episode off with a story about ordering pizza. The deep dish part of the story is when he dives into how his habit of ordering took over vs. what he was suppose to order and why he was suppose to be changing his order that day. We all forget things or miss details but the goal is to make sure we miss as few as possible and don't let it happen time after time.

People hire consultants/agencies for SEO, Social Media and PPC and then forget why - to improve biz/efficiency/process. Do we listen? Sometimes yes, but often no and while it isn't out of malice or not thinking the suggestion was important (well, maybe sometimes that is why) rather it just was forgotten.

We aren't taking exactly about "Set it and Forget it" SEO but rather a lack of process or just missed opportunities.

Note that no cats were actually hurt, but Dave's cat Cooper did think that this is his favorite show and he loved being on the show driving Dave crazy!

So what can you do?

Set reminders for whatever you think you are forgetting. Set calendar reminders for the year that happen every X weeks or X months.Create checklists to help you, your team and other teams.Created processes to help your team now and in the future know what to do, how to do it and when to do it.Document and define processes - if nothing else do this for one thing a month and slowly integrate it into your team and other teams and then do another.

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have everybody join us again on another one of these fabulous business of digital episodes. And I, uh, just want to give a shout out to my cohost, Dave. How's that 

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:21] yay. That was, I don't know why that came to mind, but it did.

I just wanna

Matt Siltala: [00:00:26] make sure, cause you know, our, our. Our pre recording conversation is your cat. Okay. Have you killed them

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:31] yet? He's out there feeding, uh, in, in, in my cat's defense, he really didn't have much food in his bowl and the water was empty. So there was, there was a reason why he would not leave. Oh, and guess who's at the door.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:45] Seriously. We're going to have a cat. We are going to have a dead cat by the end of this recording folks. So. All right,

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:59] cat in my car, not a [00:01:00] dog.

Matt Siltala: [00:01:01] I think it's funny. I think we should just, I think we should just leave this in the cats.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:05] Leave in 30 seconds of Cooper. This is my life. Every day Cooper. They're going to install a cat door and my door probably at the rate.

We're going

Matt Siltala: [00:01:14] well, that's a perfect segue into what we're talking about because you're doing something to make it easier on you. And so you could just, you know, put the door in and forget about it and not have it. You know, it wasn't a great setup, but

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:28] what we're talking about good after golf

Matt Siltala: [00:01:30] class. Well, the golf club, what we're talking about today, folks is, uh, again, we don't know exactly what we're going to title it yet as, as we're speaking, but it's something to the effect of, you know, we have habits where we kind of set things and forget about them and we need to not do that.

And I know that this is going to be. I'll let Dave set this up and

Join and listen for some tips on better locking down your site, securing your data better and how to spot site hacks that may hurt your SEO and more importantly those visiting your site.

In the past 6-12 months it seems that hacked sites and similar type things have been on the rise or maybe Dave has just had the "luck" to come across more stories and instances. Some of the recent news stories you may want to catch up on include these:

Hackers exploit websites to give them excellent SEO before deploying malwareWordPress Easy WP SMTP Plugin VulnerabilityGoogle’s John Mueller on Cleaning Up Hacked Pages“Gootloader” expands its payload delivery options

Types of Hacks

The guys go through some common types of site hacks (Link Injection, WordPress Plugins, Root Access and more) while Mat gives some examples of social engineering, emails and text messages that are trying to get you to login or download malware/trojans through links.

Hack Prevention

During the episode Dave gives a number of ideas and things to do to help prevent or quickly find hacks and issues. While they are all not listed here we give you some (listen or read the full transcript for all of the things mentioned):

Audit or crawl your site on a regular basisLook at source code as often it bad links are hidden in the footer and navigation but not visible on a page.Pay attention to Google and Bing Webmaster toolsLook at what search queries and pages are driving impressions and clicksWatch and look in your analytics on a regular basisSet up times monthly/weekly/quarterly to do these things so you don't forget in the future.Audit and vet all plugins you use with ANY CMS - WordPress, Shopify, Drupal, etc.Look at ways to lockdown who can login, what IP addresses can login, and use various plugins, tools and best practices to just lock things down more than "out of the box".Limit login attempts and don't use usernames like admin, root, and other obvious usernames.Test plugins and code on a staging or internal development site.

For more ideas on how better to secure and lock down your site and data here are some of our past episodes that may help.

WordPress Plugin Performance & SecurityCompany Data Security Guide

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, thanks for joining us on another one of these businesses, digital podcast episodes as always. We have my trusty co-host over there, Dave. How's it going today?

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:19] Okay, it's going, going, going all week long.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:24] Well going is better than not going and things getting normal is better than things. Not getting normal, I guess, you know? Well today guys, we're just going to jump right into it like we do. Cause that's our emo. And so just to give you guys a, a little bit of an idea, um, Dave wanted to chat about this topic and this is a fun one.

Well, it can be, it can be fun, but it can't be fun. If you're on the receiving end of it, but, uh, we're going to chat either. No, no, no, not at all, but, uh, we're going to talk about hacking and for those that have had issues with, uh, being [00:01:00] hacked and, and we're just going to take all the different levels and, and hopefully give you guys some information about what to look out for, what to watch for what, uh, just, just be per beat a little bit more prepared.

And so with that said, my friend, uh, why don't you kick us off with, uh, where you wanted to go with this?

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:18] I want to throw my computer and it's loud running fan into the car freak. That's what I want to

Matt Siltala: [00:01:23] do. I wanted to

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:25] do that because trying to edit this out. If you can or cannot hear it. I hope, I hope it can't, but I was on a call with someone recently and they were like, what is that noise?

Like? There's like, is there a big truck going? No, it's the fan of my stupid computer.

Matt Siltala: [00:01:41] I could hear construction way back in the day, but I can't hear anything in your background, but