The internet is not about Google.

The internet is not about ads.

The internet is not about traffic.

The internet is about PEOPLE.

Shocker, right? Amidst all the hubbub centered around how to best optimize X, or increase Y, or reduce Z, we overlook the simple, raw purpose of the internet.

At its core, the internet was created as a tool for sharing information and connecting networks of people. Websites were developed to be a place for users to engage with unique content, and Google was designed to help people find this content. The internet has always been about making things easier for people.

But in our hurry to “rise-to-the-top,” we often forget that there are living, breathing humans behind the mouse and keyboards and hyper-focus on marketing tactics instead of creating engaging and helpful experiences for our users.

Usability First. Optimization Second.

When designing a piece of content for your users, it’s really important that you don’t let yourself elevate the role of tactics. Yes, optimization is important, but it’s more important that you focus on the user’s experience. People are really good at sniffing out marketing strategies, and so you have to ask yourself whether or not your piece is actually bringing value to your users. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter where your page ranks if no one is interested in what you have to offer.

Skip the Jargon

As marketers, it’s really easy to over-optimize content and spend too much time talking about our brand(s). But here’s the deal: no one likes an egocentric company. So cut everyone a break and quit talking about yourself. One of the most common mistakes is when websites/creative pieces assume others are interested in their products. Don’t assume anything. Instead, convince your user that you actually have something valuable to offer.

With regards to design, there are a few things to keep track of. First, be aware of how you use your calls to action. We’ve all seen sites that inundate their readers with “buy now” or “find out more” buttons scattered throughout the page. Instead, try and hone in on a clear navigational path and then use your resources to show your users what you have to offer.

Refine Your Content

We’ve all read the studies about how much more distracted we’re becoming, and yet so many websites still rely too heavily on text. While there’s nothing wrong with well-written copy (you are reading an article after all!), it’s usually better to distil your content down to its bare bones and implement visual elements like icons, charts and video. Focus on creating easily skim-able columns of content with a clear option for the user to read more.

There’s a common dilemma between designers and marketers regarding how content should be displayed. Designers typically want things stripped completely down, usually only showcasing images and video. Marketers, on the other hand, typically like to fill pages with search-friendly content that can often create a cluttered design. Fight the desire to swing to an extreme. You’ll run the danger of creating a beautiful site that no one can find, or an easily accessible site that nobody wants to use.

DO Sweat the Small Stuff

In the age of agile, we’ve grown used to shipping projects. And while this works really well for a whole host of tasks, don’t let it make you lazy when testing your projects. When it comes to user experience, the beauty is in the details. Take the time to sift through your contact forms, navigate to deep pages and assess the quality of your design elements. While it may not seem pressing to have a universal system for all your colors and images, its details like these that will go a long way in allowing your user to engage with your content.

Meet People Where They’re At

In a world where anything can be accessed from anywhere, it’s vital that your content has the chops to meet users in their current contexts. And with a growing mobile market, you content can’t just slide by on smaller screens. Instead, it has to be just as beautiful on a 4-inch display as on a 27-inch monitor.

While there’s a lot of discussion around whether to utilize responsive design or build a separate mobile site, make sure to keep your user’s interests at the forefront of your decision process – there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Regardless of your decision, when it comes to designing for mobile, it’s important that you recognize responsive design not as a inferior to its desktop alternative, but as a completely new medium in itself. While there are a ton of different techniques, the bigger theme is that you focus on making it a pleasant experience for your users to engage with your content on mobile platforms.

Conclusion

Amidst so many tactics and strategies, it can be easy to forget the simple importance of building quality user experiences. Social shares, rankings, and traffic are only as good as the user engagement. Ultimately, we can’t look at our users as mindless lemmings who will click through our pages. Instead, we have to recognize the common motivations, desires and expectations of our audience and try to meet these needs in the most engaging and humanlike manner.

Luke Clum is a Seattle outreach coordinator who loves hiking and alpine climbing. Find him on his personal site at lukeclum.com

Let’s face it, with so much content floating around the Internet, you might be feeling the pressure when it comes to creating brilliant new ideas to get people’s attention. That’s why I’ve got this little secret I want to share with you…it’s called co-marketing. Now, it may sound a little daunting at first, but it’s actually pretty simple (and pretty darn exciting). Think about it as networking for your business. Co-marketing is all about forming relationships with other companies and working together to create new opportunities. By finding and collaborating with businesses that complement your own expertise, you can open up your company to a world of opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

There’s more to it than just slapping two companies’ names on something and sharing it with the world though. Co-marketing is about jointly creating and promoting a piece of content or a product and sharing the success of your efforts. Now don’t think you can’t do co-marketing just because you’re not buddy-buddy with the execs at some big-shot companies. Starting small is just fine, and remember, your network is bigger than you think!

Why is Co-marketing Important?

1. Give your audience a new perspective

Chances are you’re an expert on certain topics within your field, but maybe there are a few subjects that you don’t quite know as much about. Don’t limit what your audience can learn from you just because of what you know. Co-marketing is a great way to introduce your audience to a wider range of topics, opinions, and ideas. Help them (and you!) see things from a different angle and explore new concepts. Keep this in mind when you’re picking a topic to cover in your co-marketing partnership. Play to both companies’ strengths, but make sure you’re creating something you wouldn’t normally do on your own.

2. Reach a new audience

Eventually it’s going to get difficult to keep expanding your reach if you’re not expanding your content as well. By branching out and covering a new topic, you’re going to attract a wider range of visitors. Plus, by working with a company that has an established audience that’s different from your own, your content is being shared with a whole new set of eyes. A major benefit of co-marketing is the sharing of results of your marketing efforts. Make sure to set up clear guidelines from the start as to how each company will be handling promotion and what information you’ll be sharing.

*Warning: If you’re sharing leads with a company, make sure you’re letting your audience know. Be up front and clear if you’ll be sharing personal information, so nobody is surprised later on.

3. Publish guest content

You may have a brilliant blogging team made up of top-notch writers and content creators, but there are so many people out there who have different ideas and perspectives they want to share (no matter what field you’re in). Use co-marketing as a way to have other industry leaders share their knowledge. Having people from other respectable companies post to your blog will provide a wider range of opinions and concepts. As a bonus, your guest author is likely to share the post with their own network, further expanding your reach and bringing in new readers.

4. Generate links back to your website

Need a quick SEO boost too? Co-marketing has you covered. Both the content you’re creating and the landing pages that are hosting it can serve as a platform for other links to your website. For example, you can include links to related content or more in-depth material that would be of interest to your reader — an easy solution if you just don’t have enough space to talk about everything! Having more quality links back to your website will help increase your search engine results so people are coming to you. .

Getting started with Co-marketing

1. Find the right partner

You don’t need to know leading industry experts to do co-marketing. Use both your personal network as well as introductions from colleagues to get in touch with companies that may be a good fit. While you probably shouldn’t be partnering up with a direct competitor, you should look for a business with ideas and goals that will complement your own. Get the conversation started by explaining why you think it’s a worthwhile partnership and start pitching some ideas of what you could co-promote. Even starting with something small such as writing a guest blog post can turn into a larger working relationship later on.

2. Pick a topic

Nail down a topic and type of content that works for both parties. Whether it be a webinar, ebook, video, or infographic, make sure both parties are on board and have the capabilities to produce it. Focus on picking something that will be of interest and value to both of your audiences. Use your goals, whether it be to increase volume, quality, or a specific segment to determine what you are going to create and how you’re going to deliver it.

3. Put a plan and timeline into place

You’re probably used to setting a timeline and deadlines for your own schedule, but this is extra important when working with another company. Working externally, there are a lot of extra factors you must consider, so make sure you set a timeline that includes some extra buffer time. There are twice as many brand guidelines, writing styles, and approval processes you must go through, so you’ll want to allow yourself enough time to make sure everything is top notch and not rushed. In addition to just deciding what you’re going to promote, set up guidelines and expectations as to how each company will handle promotions. No one likes when they’re left hanging to do all the work on their own, so establishing a quantifiable promotional goal for each partner will help keep everyone on track. Pick reasonable deadlines and goals that both parties are accountable for to help ensure a smooth working relationship. Setting standards from the start (followed by open communication throughout the process) is the strongest foundation for a successful co-marketing relationship.

So, go ahead and reach out to someone and see what the possibilities are. You might even find that co-marketing is a great way to take a little bit of the burden off yourself and see things in a new light!

Elizabeth Rosenthal 

[Note from the editor: Want to know more on the subject of outreach and how to network opportunities for your business? We've just launched the new Expert Outreach module in DistilledU to help you communicate effectively and get your brand featured on site. Take a look over in the Further SEO section now.]

In this video, the guys talk through some more creative ideas when it comes to pitching your content as well as ways of successfully reaching out to people. You can read the full transcript below.

How involved in the creative process are you? How are you communicating throughout projects with your team? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

DistilledLive | Avoiding Outreach Fails

Rob: Hello and welcome to another episode of “Distilled Live.” I’m Rob Toledo.

James: And I’m James Daugherty.

Rob: In light of our recent DistilledU module that just launched regarding outreach campaigns, we figured we’d focus on one of the key points that we brought up there, and it was a question that we get asked quite frequently is:  How do I prevent an outreach campaign from failing? We get this question a lot. It’s on the mind of any outreach coordinator that the minute you launch that project:  How do I make sure that this is successful? So we thought we’d just kind of go over some of the key points as to why a campaign commonly fails and how to avoid those.

James: And we’re all familiar with the purpose of outreach. So we’re connecting with people online and sharing our content. But it always doesn’t go as planned, and there are a few points that we run into a lot that always seem to lead to failures. One of the first things is unrealistic expectations. Sometimes the client automatically thinks that we’re going to get a number of wins on sites like Mashable and USA Today and The New York Times, and places like that, which is true, you can get wins like that. We’ve done it. A lot of people have done it. But for every campaign, that’s not realistic. So you need to take a look at your content, who your audience is, and who are you going to pitch those items to.

Rob: And very similar along those lines, one of the most common questions we get at the very beginning of a project is:  How many links is this going to get us? We think it’s important to turn the conversation around and focus more on things like high-quality wins, reaching the right audience, putting the content we’re creating in front of people who will be really interested in the brand and in this content that they’re producing. It creates a better effect as far as like making sure that we’re creating relevant content that will ultimately reach the right audience.

James: Sure. Along those lines, you want to stay flexible with your time because time equals, you know, how much prospecting outreach you can actually do. If the creative piece takes too long to create, you’re suddenly only left with little time for outreach and prospecting, and the client is still asking you to deliver on these wins that you promised. So being flexible with your schedule, changing those around, and same with your resources, creating content, how that’s going to be, how the time is going to take to create that content.

Rob: Yeah. And kind of along those lines with, you know, time is, a lot of times when you’re doing outreach, you’re not working on just your time or the client’s time, you’re also working on these people you’re contacting time. So you might get a hold of an editor of a blog or a major news site who is really interested in your content, but their editorial calendar might be three or four months out. So making sure that you’re kind of aligning those expectations from all three sides – from the client, your contact, and your own expectations as well. A good way to do that is just making sure that from the get-go, you’ve set yourself up really well as far as organization goes, getting a good system in place that you can track all the contact emails you’ve sent out, anything that’s gone live. Making sure you’ve got yourself a good solid way to track all this stuff really efficiently is going to basically ensure that this project is a lot more successful.

James: Yeah. We use BuzzStream in-house. Some of our clients are pretty big, so we’ve got five or six members, team members working on the same project. So using a tool like that helps us collaborate easier. It prevents overlaps so we’re not wasting time. We’re being more efficient with our time [on average] too.  

Rob: And then also, just last and arguably the most important part is just ensuring that you have good content to pitch. A lot of times, you can kind of tell off the bat whether or not a project’s going to go really well, or it might be a little bit slower, based off of the content that you have to work with. Anything from good, high-quality blog posts that act as really good resources, or something evergreen on the website that acts as a good tool that people can use, those things are really easy to outreach, and you’re able to put them, if they’re relevant to the brand that you’re working with, it’s a lot easier to go out and find the audience that will be interested in those types of topics, which then put your client’s brand right in front of these audiences that are reading about these things that you’ve already created content for.

James: Something that Rob and I have always campaigned for with every project is to be involved with the creative piece from stage one, from step one because we’re going to be pitching the content. So we know what’s going to work, what’s not going to work, what space it’s going to fit into. So having your outreach team involved in that process earlier is going to help ensure success.

The Importance of Open Communication

Rob: Another thing that we think is really important is making sure you’re keeping communication as open as possible throughout the whole project, whether that be with an internal manager, the client themselves, the contacts you’ve gained, and your team as a whole.

Here at Distilled, our team lead, Adria, loves getting emails from us with client updates. She loves seeing the project move forward, almost on a daily basis. She wants just quick little updates. We’ve set up a system, kind of a morning scrum, where we’ll all talk about it, and it keeps everybody in the loop. What’s really good about this is everybody is aware of how a project is going almost on a daily basis. What that really prevents is any surprises at the end of the month. Adria and our whole team are very aware if somebody needs to step in and help one of us out on a project, and that’s become really valuable, just keeping those communication lines as open as possible. Specifically, with the client, you also want to make sure that they’re aware of what’s going on, and I think it’s a really value-add to the project if you’re keeping the communication back and forth, at least on a weekly basis. What this allows is they see the value of your work. They feel like they’re more in the loop, and they can also offer feedback on how they think the project is going on a more routine basis. This prevents mostly just big surprises from coming up. Nobody wants to get to the end of a three-month project and have nothing to show for it and the client’s going to be angry. This is all really preventable if you just keep that communication going real strong, back and forth, throughout the whole project.

James: The same is true for the blogs and sites that you’re working with. Your point of contact needs to be in the loop. There’s no such thing as emailing someone too much, so letting them know what’s going on, keeping them up to date on the status of a post, of a creative piece, really just staying in touch with them, and the same is true for these contacts that we want to use long term.

If you feel that you’ve met someone that can be beneficial for other projects down the road, stay in contact, tweet at them, email. It takes a second just to add someone on LinkedIn, endorse them. Those things go a long way, and they’ll establish a long-term relationship that you can go back to. Keeping it mutually beneficial is important, so referencing them, maybe in a future guest post that you have, letting them know that their work is great and you’re behind it, that works awesome.

Rob: Yeah. Just generically promoting their content as much as you see fit. A lot of these contacts that you’re looking to make are going to have a lot of great resources themselves, and helping them promote that is only going to make the relationship stronger.

Specific Tactics

James: So far we’ve been talking about the purpose of outreach and outreach failures. So now we want to go over some specific tactics to help you avoid outreach pitfalls. One of the first things to do when you’re prospecting is find sites that host guest content. So use advanced search features and search for sites that aren’t just maybe offering guest posts, but guest content. So they host cool stuff made by other people, so they just don’t share their own news and own content. So that’s an important thing that a lot of new outreachers, they fall into this trap of searching for sites that don’t have opportunities.

Rob: Another really important thing to always keep in mind is making sure that the content you’re pitching is ultimately on topic and relevant to the website that you’re pitching it to. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t get creative with your prospecting, like there’s definitely opportunities there to extend beyond just the specific niche of the product or client that you’re pitching. But you want to make sure you don’t overextend yourself. If you’re working, with a dog treats company, you don’t want to be pitching to the web design space online. However, you can think of it a little bit more creatively, is like you wouldn’t necessarily just go after dog blogs. You might go after family blogs or health blogs, and talk about a variety of things that could come with this piece of content that this dog treat company could create, ultimately putting it on topic and in front of those audiences that are relevant to the brand.

James: When you’re pitching these blogs, finding the right contact information. Sometimes you’ll come across a site that seems like great fit, has cool content, but you can’t find their contact information. There’s no way to contact them. Usually those sites, they don’t accept guest content. Sometimes it’s best to walk away. If you feel it’s really valuable, you can keep digging and use a tool to search for name and contact information.

Rob: Yeah, I think that’s a common pitfall that a lot of people fall into, is that they just spend too much time looking for contact information for somebody that, for a variety of reasons, just might not want to be contacted. Another really important thing to always keep in mind is making sure that there’s not a lot of overlap in who you’re outreaching to, really specifically when you’re working on a team on a project. If James and I both send a relatively similar email pitching the same content to a blogger or website, that’s going to look negatively, both not on us, but also on the brand that we’re working with.

James: Yeah. So when it comes to outreach, so the first thing you need is a name. If you don’t have a name, chances are you’re going to have a harder time pitching to somebody. I mean, you can still do it. I’ve done it before. I’ve been successful at it, but your success rate is going to be much, much higher if you can get someone’s name and actual email address, not just a contact form.

Rob: Yeah. I think one of the most important things that you should do up front in the email is really make sure that you’re qualifying yourself. Too many times, on any variety of websites that I’ve gotten contacted, where people are pitching guest posts to me, they’ll just kind of blab about what it is that they’re offering me. They don’t necessarily qualify themselves, like why are they contacting me, why are they relevant to me. Why do they deserve to be featured on this website? It’s really important that, up front, you’re kind of positioning yourself in a way that makes it look like you have an authoritative view on this topic or piece of content that you’re looking to pitch. James: Yeah. You just can’t come out and ask for them to host your content. I mean, let them know why it’s going to be a good fit for their readers, why it’s going to fit well on their blog. Compliment them. Let them know why you chose their blog, why this is so cool and why it’s such a good fit.

Rob: Yeah, and I think that just really comes down to understanding their readership. It is invaluable to spend at least a few minutes just kind of browsing through their website, browsing through previous articles that they’ve written, and really relating to that in your pitch. Talking about what it is that you liked about a specific article is really valuable. You want to make it look like you’ve put effort into this, because otherwise, why would they put effort into what it is that you’re offering? It goes without saying that the more time you’re willing to put into just getting to know somebody, the more likely it is that they’re going to want to work with you.

James: Thanks for watching our Distilled Live on outreach. If you have any questions, comments, hit us up in the comments below, or tweet at us.

Rob: Yeah. I’m Rob Toledo.

James:  I’m James Daugherty.

Rob: Thanks for watching.

Analytics lets us show how traffic is increasing over time. (or so we hope it will)

Many of our clients come to us and ask for help with marketing, community building, and of course increasing traffic. Part of that process is ensuring that the reporting is set up correctly so they can see the ROI. Many sites today prefer Google Analytics due to the price tag and ease of use. But the ease of use is just on the surface. Many search marketers love it due to what can be done with it on the fly.

Our newest team member at Distilled Seattle asked for some resources to learn about Google Analytics and that got me thinking about a good list of resources. Alas there are already some great guides out there. A particularly well done analytics guide for small business owners just flabbergasted me.

I tell my clients not to write content if they can’t be the best, and I’m going to take my own advice. This is not going to be the “complete” list of resources, but rather the busy person’s guide to learning Analytics fast. Rather than 50 articles, I am going to give each level (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) a list of three I think you should be reading.

Beginner: Learning Google Analytics

• Most Comprehensive: Google Analytics Training from Google
  It’s free and it’s from the source, if you are true beginner, start here. 
• Understanding It All: Web Analytics Demystified
  Avinash Kaushik is the godfather of Analytics. This is a great guide that breaks down what it all means.
• Setting It Up: The 8 Google Analytics Features Every Site MUST Have Enabled
  These 8 things have not changed, they are the most important to set up no matter what level you are at.

Intermediate: Starting to Customize

• Advanced Segments: From the Source
  I personally use Advanced Segments more than custom reports because I need overarching trends quickly. This is a definite must to learn once you get comfortable with Analytics.
• Mobile Tracking: Tracking Mobile Visitors in Google Analytics: A Checklist Guide for Mobile Insights
  Mobile is growing everyday, this is something every site should be monitoring. If you are seeing major mobile traffic and don’t already serve mobile visitors, check out our new guide to Building a Mobile Friendly Site.
• Filters: The Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics Profile Filters
  This is a fantastic guide to the ins and outs of filtering. Just remember the warning at the top, always have one unfiltered profile. Always. But filtered profiles are a great way to really dig into specific traffic without as much sampling as your main profile.

Advanced: Digging Deep and Hacking for Results

• Tracking Google Referral Strings: Decoding Google’s Referral String (or, how I surviVED Secure Search)
  This is my new favorite thing and we are testing it on a client. So far it works really well. I am not sure how long it’ll last, but for now this is one you should definitely look into. 
• Custom Variables: Using Custom Variables to Make Google Analytics Work for You
  Pull in data that you never dreamed Analytics could pull in. Learning custom variables let’s you custom design Analytics to your needs. Want to see your average ranking? Custom Variables let you do that!
• Multi-Channel Funnels: Uncover Badass Exposers with Google Analytics’ Multi-Channel Funnels
  Mike Pantoliano is by far the smartest man I know when it comes to Analytics. One of the many things he taught me while at Distilled was how to find and possible change how Google views conversion tracking. Want another good post on multi-channel and attribution? Check out Measuring and Increasing the ROI of Your Content Resources. And just follow the man on Twitter.

This is not EVERYTHING you can learn or do, but I think these are the most important things to learn when getting into Analytics at any level. I dare you to level up, and if you know all of the advanced stuff, I challenge you to do something new. The Google Referral Strings was something I planned on tasking someone at Distilled with and then someone else beat me to it! There is so much you can do with Analytics, you just have to ask the right questions. We even have the Analytics module launching soon on DistilledU. Check it out if you’re looking for an educational resource that is updated as things change.

Kate Morris Kate Morris is a search marketer with experience in organic and paid search. She is a native Texan (Hook 'em Horns!) but enjoying her time in Seattle at Distilled. You can find her at a variety of conferences teaching as much as she can.

Sorry…had to be done. I’m here at eConsultancy’s Future of Digital Marketing conference where our very own Mr Will Critchlow is presenting his thoughts on the Future of Search. As the chances of all of our readers actually being in this conference room with me is rather small, I’ve taken it upon myself to sum up Will’s talk so you don’t miss a thing.

And you don’t want to miss a thing.

The Future of Search is Understanding

Will’s first point absolutely fascinates me. I don’t come from a technical background. I’ve never coded anything in my life. I don’t pretend to know how Google does what it does. All I know from my limited understanding is that this search should not work.

But it does…and that is just cool

Google has moved beyond just simply indexing the web and is now understanding it. Google spiders can now understand not just words in the text, but context and relevancy. It can piece all of this information together serve you results like the one above. This isn’t done by a bunch of Google Interns sitting in a room piecing together context clues from the web; this is machine learning. If I told you that five years ago, you would have said that was some freaky Matrix stuff. But it’s here now. This is the future.

So this kind of forward thinking is cool and all, but I know what you’re thinking. What does this mean for me, Joe Marketer? Well, I’m glad you asked Joe. Whoever you are. But first we need to keep looking so we can have a complete picture to work from. So, on to Will’s next point…

The Future of Search is Signed in Everywhere

Who here is signed into a Google account? It’s OK…don’t be shy. I would imagine the vast majority of you reading this are and that’s great. Actually, if you think about it, it’s really quite difficult to actually sign out of Google once you get going. So where will this take us? Will is predicting that the next step is Google Cookie Sync. We are not far away from a world where users will be automatically logged in across devices, across platforms and technologies. Google will know who you are, where you are going, what you like and don’t and what information you need. While this may be mildly terrifying for some, as marketers this is great because this is the kind of data we want to know!

In the good ole’ days, a typical search query would look like this:

Now, with this idea of “signed in everywhere”, what is really happening is this:

And this trend is absolutely growing. What we are starting to see, and what we will see more of going forward, is a change in the ‘traditional’ keyword model. Google is showing that they care less about the specific keyword, both in queries and results, and more about the concept. Here’s an example: if you are set-up on Google Now, which you should be as it is awesome, you no longer need to type out a long search query like “breakfast restaurant near london bridge”. You can simply search “breakfast”. Google knows where you are located, it knows it’s the morning where you are and it can serve you results for breakfast places within a short distance from where you are standing. Great, now I’m hungry. Thanks Obama.

But seriously, does this mean as Marketers we need to go back to stuffing content with the keyword breakfast? Absolutely not. This brings me to the final point in Will’s presentation.

The Future of Search is Good Marketing

This, for me, is crux of where we are going. Now don’t get me wrong, search marketing is not just good marketing, there are a certain amount of technical skills that are needed, but the future is pointing towards this way. Will has spoken on this before so I won’t belabor the point.

I speak to business owners everyday and the common theme I encounter is that people are nervous. And this is exactly what Google wanted. Caffeine led to Panda and Penguin being a reality and all of these updates mean that Google is, not so subtly, encouraging brands to act more like…well, brands. In fact, and I’m quoting Will here, it would not come as a surprise if the next major update was a Bad Merchant penalty.

Now, you can have a look at Will’s slides here and draw your own conclusions from all of this.

In fact, I would highly encourage that as these are predictions, and if predictions always came true then, I would be writing this from a yacht in the Caribbean and not sitting on the floor at a conference venue in a hotel in East London. What I want you to take away from this is that the future will upon us sooner than we think. And if we are not considering this stuff now, well…when will we?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments. We absolutely love talking about this stuff.

To help you choose the best format for your site, Bridget and I decided to put together a best practice guide to Building Your Mobile Friendly Site, which we’ve just launched today. It discusses important points about design, development, search engine optimization, and web analytics for both separate and responsive sites. The first step, though, is choosing which type of site you’re going to build.

As I mentioned above, there are two standard options for your mobile site: responsive design or a separate site. A responsive site uses the same HTML for both the mobile version and the desktop version, but the CSS uses media queries to find the browser width and changes accordingly. A separate mobile site is just that – completely separate.

There are benefits to both, so it can be difficult to decide whether you want to build a separate site or modify your current site to be responsive. We put together a flow chart to help guide you (click here for a mobile-friendly version):

The basic logic is this:

• If you don’t have a lot of resources, find a content management system that automatically builds your site to be responsive. Just make sure to check the pages you upload with multiple browser widths – you don’t know exactly what CSS rules they implemented!
• If you do have enough resources to build a new site, and you want your mobile visitors to have a different experience than desktop visitors, build a separate mobile site, with different pages and content. You’ll probably want to include a link at the top to the desktop version of the site, though, and keep track of how many visitors choose to browse that site rather than your mobile version. You may be surprised at how many visitors want to see the same thing they see on their PCs.
• If you have enough resources and would like to deliver the same experience, the choice is down to how much you want to modify the mobile version of the site. If you would like to optimize your mobile site very specifically for mobile search, you should build a separate mobile site, since you can customize it separately. But first check to see if mobile searchers are significantly different than your PC searchers: if mobile searchers just have fewer long tail searches than desktop searchers, you really don’t have to change keyword targeting.
• Which brings us to the last option: if you have the time and resources to build a separate mobile site, but want to deliver the same experience and content to visitors, build a responsive site!

The rest is really up to you: if we could, we’d love to build an ultimate guide that gives you step-by-step instructions for building a mobile site, but sites need a lot more customization than that. Instead, we’ve put together a best practice guide, that walks you through the design process, lets you know about the best technologies to use, and covers search engine optimization basics for both responsive and separate mobile sites:

Since we don’t have comments on the actual guide, let us know what you think in the comments below!

Kristina Kledzik is an SEO consultant at Distilled, who thinks responsive design is amazing and isn't afraid to admit her bias towards it. She is also quite social, despite her inactivity on Twitter. She promises she'll respond to direct tweets @ her.

This was my favourite slide of the day – it’s Paul May’s & the photo was taken by Stacey Cavanagh.

The wifi password was ‘going underground’ but despite the dearth of natural light in the basement auditorium the unexpectedly clement weather (yeah I know it’s the end of May but someone forget to let the weather Gods know) meant all the attendees and speakers had a decidedly sunny outlook.

Suitably caffeinated and netbook battery fully charged I took my place I the auditorium. What follows are my notes from the sessions. Before we jump in I’d like to thank Kelvin Newman, his fantastic team and of course the sponsors for putting on yet another fantastic (and FREE) event – well done guys and girls! Additionally, big love to Cheri who was also there taking notes and came to the rescue when my battery died.

Danny Denhard – Sir Alex Ferguson’s Guide to Building the Best Content Team

Danny Denhard works for VoucherCodes.co.uk. Using a football team as a metaphor he described what he thinks makes up a great content marketing team. It goes a little something like this:

Goalkeeper

Qualities – safe hands, attention to detail, great agility

Fullbacks

Qualities – agile, strong, athletic, intelligent

Centrebacks

Qualities – on field leaders, communicators

Midfield

Qualities – tenacious, often under-rated, work for the team

Attacking Midfield

Qualities – creative, PR, design/coordination, driving the team forward and assisting others.

Strikers

Qualities – goal driven, money earners, match winners. You need one striker for every project – they work independently to deliver what’s needed.

Natural born leaders

Beacuse every team needs a true leader.

Takeaways

• Know when to make a sub when it comes to projects
  • Make sure your subs are fully-prepped
  • Rotate your squad to keep things fresh
• Don’t just strive for links – make the project last until the final whistle – over-achieve
• Some of your best players can and do leave
  • So nuture and build everyone on the team
• Always know your goals & concentrate on the right trophies
• Be part of the bigger picture your aim should be to build a brand

Laura Edwards – How to Create Content People Want to Share

How to create content people have to share from NitterNatter on Vimeo.

Nitter Natter founder Laura Edwards changed things up by presenting with a video running in the background, rather than having a traditional slide deck. Pretty damn cool, huh? The video is embedded above and also includes her audio track so you can essentially see her whole presentation right here.

At the heart of Laura’s presentation was getting your content to stand out. After all content is everywhere.

Shareable content requires investment and effort. Make sure your budget and resources are relative to what you want (or need) to deliver.

Laura highlighted a mistake that many companies make – namely having an intern managing the blog, or worse, using services like textbroker to create $5 content. It probably won’t be enough to stand out.

Good content takes effort and coordination. She advcates getting niche and carrying out research to figure out who you’re trying to target. What do they like and share already?

NitterNatter use Radian6 however she also recommends the following other tools if you’re on a budget: Addictomatic, Viralheat, PeopleBrowsr, GoogleTrends, Topsy, IceRocket, TrendsMap, TweetReach, SocialMention and TwitterCounter.

Once you’ve figured out what’s already being talked about, you can determine what you can create to add to the conversation.

She warns against being too topical – e.g. creating content for things like Valentine’s day can make it difficult to stand out in a sea of similar content.

Finally Laura highlighted that it’s really easy to fall at the final hurdle when it comes to sharing mechanisms. For example many brands include twitter or facebook icons on their packaging, but don’t actually include their handles or URLs. Additionally they don’t give people a reason to follow them via social media. Similarly consider your placement of social buttons on your blog or content areas of your site. Sharing buttons should always be placed near the top rather than at the end of the  content. They moved their client’s share buttons from the bottom of posts to the top and saw a 40% increase in social shares over a two week period.

Dan Fielder -Developing an Editorial Mindset in a Non-Editorial Business

Dan Fielder works for Sticky Content.

Some of the big consumer brands have budgets and resources e.g. Red Bull. However B2B marketers are often struggling to create and plan content even though the appetite is there.

So how do B2B’s do it?

Dan thinks it’s all about finding an appropriate niche. He told a story about a nappy provider who wanted to be the go-to resource for choosing kids schools; noble perhaps but he highlighted that they’re probably not qualified to do that.

Instead he prefers to start more simply – answer a question, grow your content. He’s frequently met with the argument that a given niche is too boring – to which he responds by highlighting Louis E Page’s mesh and fencing blog.

So once you’ve got some content ideas, you’ll need to work your contacts…You need to find a way of selling in the benefits to people who might not want to write – not least because they have a full-time job to do. He highlighted the Indium Corporation who have managed to persuade their engineers to write their content – to date they have 73 posts written by engineers.

Of course you’ll need lots of ideas. These should be sourced both internally and externally and you should find a way to reward those who contribute. Underestimate what you can achieve. Even a modest blog is better than none at all.

Takeaways

• Use tried and trusted content types – e.g. how to; FAQ etc.
• Slice, dice and reuse a single asset – e.g. a talk might be a blog post, video etc.
• An attitude of generosity is really important when developing an editorial mindset. Practise random acts of content kindness.

Ben Redford – Robots, Gumballs and Marxism

Again, no slides published at the time of writing #sadface. This was definitely my favourite talk of the day Ben Redford works for Mint Digital as a product designer.

His first project brief was to connect something to the internet that doesn’t live on a screen. He started in build a bear (the shop, not the online store), he views build a bear as essentially being UGC in the physical world – people are creating their own content.

As an extension to the brief of connecting something to the internet that doesn’t live on a screen he wanted to reward people for what they do online in the real world. But what? He decided to build something which would give a real world reward whenever you were tweeted online.

Initially thought beer would be the reward for the tweet. Then he figured that might be dangerous.

Instead he made Olly – web connected smelly robot. Every time you get a tweet it releases a smell. Sadly, Olly failed on kickstarter. (I do not understand this at all. I want one. The internet is stupid.)

So he made Polly. She turns tweets into sweets. (I want one of these too).

Incidentally in the break Stacey Cavanagh came up with another alternative ‘Jolly’ – Jolly would blow bubbles when you got a tweet. I really want this to be a thing too.

Despite the lack of commercial success for both Olly and Polly,  the Ideal Home Show decided that they were the young inventors of the year. They went on Sunday Brunch to demo Polly, and created a hastag #pollybrunch. They expected 4 tweets, but it actually ended up trending worldwide. That’s a lot of gumballs.

From this Ben learned that talking about things connected to the web is very powerful. People like the web, but they love real things.

With all of these experiences under his belt he moved on to the next project – Projecteo – the mini instagram projector. He put it on kickstarter and got funding.

(This kinda tickled me – instagram is just pictures of feet and burgers, no? I’m imagining a slideshow that goes a little something like – “Here is a burger that I ate in Shoreditch; here is a burger that I ate in Hoxton; here is a burger that I ate in Clerkenwell, here’s my feet on a beach…” Whatever. I still want one.)

My takeaway from this is that whilst it’s really easy to forget about the real world with so much of what we do being focused online – that’s a mistake, I love the idea of including real, tangible assets as part of digital campaigns.

Will Koch –  How to used LinkedIn for Content Marketing

Will Koch works for LinkedIN. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to locate his slides online either

This was a lightning talk wherein he covered how LinkedIN can be particularly powerful for B2B brands who want to distribute their content. He highlighted that the B2B buying process is very complex and that it’s often self-guided. As such individuals will typically do lots of research prior to enquiring.

I have to confess that I got a little bit lost during this talk. If concrete suggestions of how to share and leverage your content were included I missed them – I’m sorry, I’m a terrible blogger and also a hopeless caffeine addict – by this point there was entirely too much blood in my caffeine stream.

Tony Samios – Great Content Marketing is about Great Storytelling

Tony Samios is COO of Caliber Interactive - again I’ve been unable to find his slides online, so you’ll have to settle for my notes.

Storytelling is as old as time itself. With the rise of social media  there’s the opportunity for customers to tell their own stories, and also for customers to find out what other individuals are saying about brands.

If you want people to share something your brand has created you’ll need to make them care – emotionally. Great stories take the audience on a journey and can change their perceptions of a brand.

Tony shared a bunch of fantastic examples of brands who’ve successfully been able to tell stroies via their content – some of the examples are below:

Simon Penson – Content Strategy > Make Data your Friend

Simon Penson is the owner of Zazzle Media.

Data’s not ‘cool’ – but it is useful

How can data help shape content strategy? No more guessing. You can let the data lead you.

Look at search first, Simon also recommends these tools

• LSIKeywords.com
• Google Ad Planner
• Google consumer surveys
• Google public data engine
• Zanran for public data.
• Google real time insights finder

Also use Google Analytics custom reports to understand the value of your content.

The future lives in social data.

Facebook power editor enables you to understand what your audience like. Plus we can use social data to see if what you’re doing is working.

CognitiveSEO now has social tools. Enables you to see what content is most shared. Also check out Fresh Web Explorer, and  Pinalytics.

Using these tools you should have plenty of data to help with idea generation.

You can also read a full transcript over on the Zazzle Media blog.

Sarah Howard – What is the Right Mix of Content?

Sarah Howard is head of content at Red Rocket Media.

Sarah highlights that when it comes to content, one size does not fit all. However there are 5 steps you can go through to figure out what you should create:

1) Get to know your audience – which social channels do they use? What content do they like to share?

2) Give your site a content audit. Make an inventory, and analyse quality. Make sure it’s aligned with business objectives, and ensure that there’s content to support prospects through the buying cycle – from awareness – to consideration – and finally, purchase.

3) Get analytical. Look at views, visits, conversions; but also social shares and comments

4) Test and refine constantly.

5) Make it a company-wide exercise. Get everyone involved – it shouldn’t just be the marketing team that are coming up with ideas and creating the content.

Eric Ingrand – Why Multicultural Content Marketing is Key to Grow your Business

The final session before lunch was a lightning talk from Eric Ingrand VP of Content Marketing for Enveritas Group.

Yet again there’s no slides online right now, but here are the key takeaways:

• It’s not enough to translate your content.
• You need to make sure it’s culturally relevant and appropriate. You need to use someone local to create your content in order to do this well.
• In some countries the majority of people access the internet via mobile – is your site mobile ready? Don’t forget about feature phones – not all countries have transitioned over to smartphones yet.

Pak Hou Cheung – Selling the Content Marketing Story

Up first post my meatball and mozzarella panini lunch was Pak Hou Cheung, a Content Strategist at BlueGlass UK.

So clearly content marketing is nothing new, but it has recently gained traction.

Why? Because it’s better than continually chasing the algorithm.

First step – figure out what your goal is and then figure out how / if content marketing will help you achieve this goal. This is really important – don’t just go out there and blindly start creating content.

In particular think about how whatever you’re creating relates to your brand – is it a good fit? If not don’t create it. Pak Hou then went on to highlight some nice examples of content for each stage of the buying process.

Consideration

Here customer stories / testimonials work well. FreshBooks have done a fantastic job of creating customer video stories on their blog.

Purchase

Crazy Egg offer a free trial, but if you elect not to sign up, they’ll offer you 40% off your subscription.

Retain & Upsell

Here he highlighted ASOS‘ product pages as being fantastic at cross-selling to customers – with their ‘complete the look’ sidebar.

Key takeaways

• Content is crucial in all stages of the sales cycle
• You need patience – content takes time to create, time to leverage and it takes time to see the effects.

Amanda Poole-Connor – Making Video Work for your Brand

Amanda Poole-Connor is MD of TNR. Again – no slide deck as yet – but my notes are below:

Video should engage, entertain, compel, and inform.

You need to figure out:

• What do you want to say?
• Who do you want to say it to?
• How do you want to say it?
• What do you want them to do about it?

Amanda shared some examples of video that TNR had created at various price points from £2k to around £7.5k illustrating that video might not necessarily be as expensive as you might think.

Justin Taylor – Putting Conversion into Content

Justin Taylor is the MD of Graphitas.

Justin kicked off by asking how you’re measuring the success of your content marketing campaigns. he gave an example of a piece of content which had received a decent number of social shares, and so on paper might be considered as successful.

But you can’t pay your mortgage with social shares…What about direct revenue?

He then shared an example with significantly fewer social shares but which delivered £7k in revenue. He then moved on to give us 10 conversion tips:

• Define your objectives.
  • What is it for? What do you want to achieve? Where do you want to be?
• Understand your audience
  • Do your research, create personas, talk to people
• Use their language.
  • Tech audience? Can use jargon. Luxury holidays? Your copy might be more evocative.
• Concentrate on headlines
  • 5 times as many people read them than body copy.
• Anchor products into content.
  • If someone is willing to read about something, they may want to buy it. He gave an example from Currys who had created a great piece of content about a particular model of a laptop, but hadn’t included a link to buy the product.
• CTAs, triggers and trust signals.
  • Identify which offers / triggers really matter – e.g. free shipping and returns etc.
• Ensure your content has visual impact.
• Add value.
  • Gave an example of fashion sites which offer the opportunity to ‘buy the look’.
• Never stop testing.
• Play to win. Do the very best you can. Hold yourself to a high standard.

Matt Roberts – Raising the Quality Bar using the Smarter Content Framework

Matt Roberts is the co-founder of Linkdex.

Sadly, again I’ve been unable to locate Matt’s slide deck, I’ll embed it here once it’s live.

He kicked off by reminding us of a Honda advert from back in 2002 – the ad featured a factory where drone-like workers produce the word “OK” – over and over and over again. The voiceover, tells us that “not everyone believes OK is OK.” and asks “What would the world be like if its favourite word wasn’t ok?”

In short, OK is not OK.

Matt went on to talk about smarter content – he’s adapted the ‘SMART’ acronym  for content:

• S - Specific, significant, shareable
• M - Measureable, meaningful, memorable
• A - Appropriate, ambitious, aligned
• R - Relevant, results-driven, resonant
• T - Timely, targeted, trackable
• E - Engaging, enjoyable, evergreen
• R - Rewarding, reaching

He really wants marketers to celebrate smarter content and to this end, Linkdex teamed up with 3 Door Digital to create SmarterContent.org a new community for sharing great content.

Ed Bussey– 7 content marketing tips for online retailers

Ed Bussey is the founder of Quill - he brought us the final lightning talk of the day.

Again, sadly I’ve not been able to locate Ed’s slides, but here are Ed’s tips:

•  Value your content – it’s the lifeblood of your website
• Define your objectives
• Customers first, SEO second
  • I think Ed’s referring to old-school keyword-stuffed content here.
• Be consistently on-brand
• Measure and optimise
• Don’t translate, localise
• Use solutions that scale

Paul May – Advanced Content Promotion Strategies & Tactics

Paul May is the co-founder of Buzzstream.

Paul highlighted, that whilst for some people like Rand Fishkin who only need to hit publish to get links, for the average Joe you’ll need to invest time and energy into outreach.

The old model of building a big ass list, email everyone, and pray – just doesn’t work anymore.

He shared his system that allows you to scale outreach without sacrificing the personalisation needed to succeed.

Start by segmenting your content market. Leverage the easier to acquire mentions and links first, this will help get the more difficult ones.

He also highlighted that you should commit to relationship building prior to outreach. Ideally you should be giving something before you expect to get something.

Finally he recommends that you automate low value tasks, but don’t automate any actual contact.

Example – Content Promotion for Orbit – a sprinkler system design tool.

First you need to understand the asset and why it’s valuable. Then start with obvious segments that might like this tool – landscaping, gardening, DIY.

He then shared his system for ‘chunking up’ and chunking down’ to find other segments that might be interested:

• Chunking up
  • What is this an example / type of?
  • What is this part of?
  • What it the intention/purpose?
• Chunking down
  • What’s an example / type of this?
  • What is a component of this?
•  Use Google trends for ideas / Dewey decimal classifications

• This content might also be interesting for other niches like:
  • Chunking up – e.g. Home improvement
  • Chunking down e.g. organic gardening, sustainable landscaping

Once you have these segments you can begin to identify potential targets and tailor your messages to them appropriately. Within each of these segments he recommends subdividing your targets as follows:

• Harvesting – link reclamation / unlinked mentions
  • These are ‘warm’ leads and should be relatively easy wins
• Resource pages / broken links
  • These are people who have already linked to something similar but don’t link to you
• Big content prospects
  • These are likely ‘cold’ leads – they may not know about you or your content so you’ll need to spend significant time and effort crafting your outreach. These links are much harder to secure but are really valuable

Process – research, relationship building, outreach

Great emails are personalised, positioned, persuasive, call to action. Why should they care? How will it help them, not just you? Start with a small ask like a tweet rather than jumping straight in to asking for a link.

Jo Kerr – If I had a Planner – Content Planning 101

The penultimate talk of the day came from Jo Kerr, digital manager for VInspired - she also brought sweets which was an excellent move.

She gave an excellent talk sharing both the lessons she wishes she’d learned running a student newspaper and how they relate to her role today.

First up, she recommends we all read this: The Elements of Content Strategy – Erin Kissane, she then went on to share her five tips:

1) Meet face to face to decide editorial themes / ideas for features etc.

However, beforehand make sure you have your marketing and business plans with you. Also have people give this some thought beforehand so they are prepared. Finally make sure you bring a calendar for public holidays etc and you’ll also need to know key dates for your industry.

2) Align your content with business aims.

3) Trust your editor.

4) Plan ahead AND be spontaneous.

This is really key – it’s of course important to have a plan, but you’ll also need to be able to move quickly as and when other opportunities unexpectedly arise. Speaking of which please go and vote for Task Squad – it’s a VInspired project that has been nominated for the Google Global Impact Challenge – they could recieve a lovely chunk of much need charitable funding, so please go and vote here.

5) Celebrate successes and keep learning.

Luke Lewis – How to Grow Social Media Communities

The final talk of the day came from Luke Lewis, UK editor of BuzzFeed, and who previously edited NME

Luke kicked off by talking a little about BuzzFeed. Essentially they want to create content you want to share. Started in 2006.

They deem something has gone viral based on the velocity of shares via social platforms. For example, 21 pictures that will restore your faith in humanity received 41 times the amount of traffic from social than via the homepage.

BuzzFeed make their money via sponsored content – they have a mantra – advertising that doesn’t suck.  Examples include their partnership with GE.

The key takeaway for me, was Luke highlighting that of all of the emotional triggers, he’s found that nostalgia is the most powerful when it comes to social sharing. – e.g. 19 things Northerners Miss when they move to London

He then went on to share his tips for building communities:

• Choose your platform (consider focusing all of your attention on just one) – Luke likes Twitter.
• Twitter tips:
  • Be relentless
  • Use photos
  • If something’s gone well tweet it again
  • Tweet your greatest hits
  • Exploit real events and react in real time

They do quite a bit of ‘planned spontaneity’ e.g. So your team lost but here are 10 reasons why it’s still awesome to be a San Francisco Fan - they actually wrote two versions of the article so they had something ready to go regardless of who won.

Finally he also shared his thoughts on making reader comments and social interactions become editorial – I particularly appreciated this sentiment given some jounalists’ somewhat disdainful view of the ‘bottom half of the internet’.

He gave some great examples of content that he’d created back at the NME around the hashtags songsthatchangedmylife and goosebumpmoments - their readers actually contributed directly to those articles and they still continue with the format today.

And so dear reader, that concludes the round up. Luke’s inspired me to share a little nostalgic song that ‘changed my life’ well, kinda. Whatever, enjoy

Blur – To The End by Blur-Official

Hannah Smith is an 'accidental' SEO Consultant having previously worked in offline marketing for 7 years. She likes pictures of cute kittens a little bit too much and has been known to give away snow globes whilst speaking at SEO conferences.

You can read the full transcript, below.

If you want to learn more on the idea of responsive design and how to deal with your content beyond the webpage, we’ve just launched a new guide on that very subject. “Creating Your Mobile-Friendly Site: The Distilled Best Practice Guide’’ talks you through the process of making a website that’s mobile-ready, and discusses best practice considerations for each stage.

Head over to our training page to take a look through it now. We’d love to hear how you’re dealing with your content in the comments below.

DistilledLive| Dealing with Content Beyond the Webpage

Hannah: Hi. Welcome to DistilledLive. My name’s Hannah Smith and this is Bridget Randolph, and today we’re going to be talking about something called content everywhere, which is pertinent. Cisco just released some data saying that last year’s mobile traffic was nearly 12 times the size of the global Internet in 2000. Definitely there’s something to be said for device diversification; that’s hard to get your mouth around! So yeah, content everywhere is something that I’ve kind of heard about, but I’m not sure what it really is. Maybe you can explain it for us.

Bridget: Sure. I mean, most of us by now are aware of this idea of mobile design, responsive design, and all these sort of tools that we can use to make our websites more flexible, more mobile-friendly, more multi-channel. And that’s really fantastic. It’s really important. But, in a way, that’s only the first part of the solution, because as we begin to see more and more different types of devices, different ways of accessing our web pages, what we’re starting to realize is actually, there’s two parts to this. There’s the web page itself, which is sort of the layout that you see when you access it. There’s also the content on that web page. And they’re not actually the same thing.

Hannah: When you say content isn’t the same as a web page, those are things that are hard for us to distinguish, I think, given how we’re used to publishing right now. Could you give us some clarification on what you mean by that?

Bridget: Sure. I mean, I think just an easy example is a sidebar, right? A sidebar is a layout element. It’s an element of a webpage. But we could put all kinds of things in a sidebar. We could have a timeline. We could have a list of related topics. We could have a list of other posts by this author. We can even have our call to action button. So we can’t just say this is a sidebar. We also need to ask, “Well, what’s the content that we’ve put in the sidebar?” And that’s how you’re separating it out.

So getting back to the responsive design concept, the responsive design for the web page, we say, “How do we deal with the sidebar?” Content everywhere, which is sort of responsive design for content, would say, “Actually, how do we deal with content if it’s a call to action? How do we deal with it if it’s a timeline? How do we deal with it if it’s related links?” And so on.

Hannah: Do you have an example of that, perhaps, in the wild? So, perhaps, somebody who implemented responsive design, but perhaps has missed something?

Bridget: A great example of this would be, actually, Starbucks, who have made a beautiful website. It looks great on a desktop. They’ve made a beautiful responsive design, so when you look at it on your mobile, it looks great. But what they haven’t thought about is, in rearranging these elements on the page layout, they haven’t thought about how their content fits into that layout. And what they’ve done on the desktop is put their call to action, one of the most important elements of their product page, they’ve put that in the right-hand sidebar. Now, in the design, they’ve decided to move the sidebar, when it shrinks the screen width, to move that sidebar to the very bottom of the page. Fair enough. It’s a pretty standard thing to do in a responsive design. What they weren’t thinking about, though, is having a call to action in the sidebar means that when that page shifts, suddenly their “Buy Now” button is no longer visible.

Hannah: I think that’s a great example, not the least because they’ve kept all of their social sharing buttons at the top. So you can tweet about these coffee beans. You just can’t buy them on a mobile, unless you’re willing to scroll and scroll.

Bridget: And I think that highlights, as well, this problem of responsive design, because it’s limited to the layout, and so it’s not thinking about the purpose of a given page’s content. And I think, for instance, if it was a blog post, having those social links might be the most important thing. You might want people to be tweeting it. For a product page, it’s not so great. You want people to buy it. Those are the sort of things that you can get more granular with if you’re looking at it in terms of the content meaning, rather than just the page layout.

Hannah: We’re talking about identifying key elements. So purchase buttons, share buttons, author, whatever. How does that work in real terms? Like, what are we actually doing with that content?

Bridget: There’s sort of two parts to what you need to do to implement this type of system. First, you have to figure out what the content is, what it means, what you’re trying to achieve with it. And then you actually have to put it in a structure that is readable to the web browser or whatever else is rendering it. So you’re going to start by figuring out what you have. You do a content audit. If you have a lot of stuff on your site, that’s probably your first step. Then you’re going to take it and look at what the different pieces are. By that, I mean you might have a blog post. You might have a recipe. You might have a review. Those are all very different, and they’re going to serve different purposes. So you want to break those out, and those are sort of your types, your broad, top-level categories. Finally, you’re going to take each type and sort of do the same thing, and say, “What are the building blocks? What are the basic elements that serve the different purposes in coming together to create this type of content?”

So an example, actually, to make it more concrete. If it’s a blog post, your type is blog post. Your elements would be title, author. You might have a teaser paragraph that you want to break away from the rest of the body, because you may want to use that on its own somewhere. So anything that you can see yourself wanting to separate out that is easy to divide from the other elements should be its own building block.

Hannah: How does that look to the people who are actually writing and creating this content?

Bridget: That’s a good question. It’s going to depend based on how you implement this technically. But generally speaking, I think what you’d be looking to do is customize whatever content management system you’re using in such a way that if the people writing it are not technical at all, you give them little fields. They can enter it all in separately. But behind that, what it will be doing is using markup, and there are sort of several markup languages that you can use. The one that we, as SEOs, are probably most familiar with would be Schema.org, but that is not all there is to markup. Simply put, markup is simply a way of describing the content that you have. So on a title, it might be a headline tag. It might be an author tag on your author byline. The reason you want to do that, rather than just formatting it as a headline, you want to tag it as a headline, because that way, when it goes out into the world, when it’s being displayed across platforms and shared across other sort of devices, that attribute of it being a headline will still be there, even if your pretty formatting isn’t.

Hannah: The simplest way is to maybe explain it as, like, rather than formatting your headline by, like, making it 20 point, making it bold, maybe italic if you’re that way inclined, go crazy, instead of doing that, you’re letting the CMS determine what size it should be dependent on the device. You’re just tagging it as a headline.

Bridget: Exactly. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that will help, as well, when it comes time to rearrange it, because you’ll have rules in place that say, “Oh, a headline is important. It needs to go at the top.”

Hannah: From an SEO perspective, what is it that we really need to do as SEOs? Because a lot of this, it seems to me like it’s a very technical solution, and I’m guessing that, for the most part, at least, it won’t necessarily be SEOs that are building these systems. But what is it we need to care about? What is it that we need to be particularly involved with in the process?

Bridget: As you say, we’re not going to do the technical implementation ourselves. I think it’s more useful to think in terms of how it can help us do our job better, because then we’ll know what to focus on when we’re in the stage of thinking about what’s important.

Hannah: Do you have, like, a concrete example of that in the wild? So maybe a publisher who has an awful lot of content, and they’ve maybe implemented something like content everywhere, and it enabled them to create richer pages as a result?

Bridget: I think a great example of this is actually BBC Food, which has all sorts of different groups of content. You might say they have pages about chefs, they have pages about their food programs, they have pages with recipes. And what they’ve done is linked it all up, because all of these different types of content actually share a common attribute, and that’s a dish. So they’ve ensured, by using this sort of method, that each of these pieces of content includes that element of dish. And what that means is that when you go to the BBC Food page and you click on any one of these things, you have this incredibly rich resource.

You might think, well, that’s great for user experience. Does it actually help with search? Well, the results that they saw indicate it does, because after implementing this, they saw 150,000 more visitors per week, just from search, and doubled their traffic overall.

Hannah: Beyond creating rich help pages, are there any other potential SEO benefits with content everywhere?

Bridget: I think absolutely, because as we’ve mentioned, it’s all about markup, and it’s all about structuring our data, and those are things that are very exciting for SEOs because it basically does our job for us. What our job is, really, is to make sure that web pages that we are working on are very clearly indicating what they do, and all this is doing is taking that to a new level. We’ve seen already a bit of that with Schema.org, for example, which we mentioned earlier. So what we can use this for, in a way, is doing that work for us. Instead of implementing Schema.org on every single page, we can actually just incorporate that when we’re customizing our CMS, so that as the content creator is putting the content into the editor of whatever kind, you can have content fields that map onto the Schema.org attributes that you want to include in the page and set it up so that it will generate that code for you. So I think that’s very exciting.

Hannah: And I guess, really, just to wrap up, what would you like people to do next? Like, what should people take away from this?

Bridget: I think, really, just go out and learn more about it, because it is a system. It’s not going to be your total strategy. But what it does do for us is enables us to sort of scale up all of the content work that we’re trying to do in a way that’s future-proofing it. So we’re not just chasing after the latest device or the latest new platform, but actually we can feel confident that our content will be ready no matter what comes out next, and that’s really important. So it might seem a bit intimidating or overwhelming, because implementing the whole thing would be a lot of work. But what you should remember is you don’t have to do everything at once. You can start by implementing it on a few pages. You can start by choosing a single type of content that you want to work on with. Any little bit that you can do to get started with this will help you in the future.

Hannah: Definitely. Cool. Well, thanks so much for joining us. We’ll see you soon.

Summer seems to have been and gone already in the UK, so I, for one, cannot wait to be heading over to the US this September for two days of glorious sunshine…I mean, online marketing!

Want to join us in Paradise? 

Paradise Point that is.

Ticket Sale time…

For one day only, we will be running an exclusive ‘Flash Sale’ for those who want to sign up early. Taking place today - Thursday 30th May, the flash sale rate will be just $749 (that’s 50% off the standard rate $1499!)

Head to the event page now to be get your ticket for 50% off the standard rate.

Here’s the lowdown on what you can expect from your two days in Paradise…

Location Location Location

This 44-acre paradise will be your home for the two full days of SearchLove San Diego. Just minutes from downtown or the beach, Paradise Point is the perfect destination for business or pleasure. Arrange some work meetings on the days leading up to the conference, or some chill out time after.

A home from home

We’ve secured a discounted rate so that you can stay in one of the beautiful Lanai Garden rooms for just $179 (plus taxes & fees) per night. This rate is also available the weekend after the conference so you can tag on a little holiday to the end of your trip and head out to explore San Diego!

Downtime

Whether you’re here to learn or your focus is on making industry contacts, there’s no better place to do it than at one of the SearchLove networking events.

We’ll be hosting an exclusive VIP welcome dinner the night before the conference. This is a ticket-only event, where you have the chance to spend the evening in the company of our expert speakers. Held in a private setting, you can ask those burning SEO questions, you wouldn’t get the chance to ask elsewhere! There will also be open-to-all networking events on both the Monday and Tuesday evening; a perfect chance to let your hair down, have a drink with your fellow peers and the speakers and generally just relax after the day’s learning.

More to come…

You’ll be hearing more from me and the rest of the team in the next couple of months as we reveal the speaker line-up and more information about the kind of sessions you can expect to see. But in the meantime, don’t forget to take advantage of the best possible rate and head to the San Diego page on Thursday 30th May!

I’ll leave you with this stunning scene…if this doesn’t get you booking your ticket to SearchLove San Diego, I don’t know what will!

Lauren Brady is the Events Coordinator for our search conferences in the UK and US, based out of the London office. Favourite part of her job? Organising the after-parties and seeing the delegates enjoying them.

Now you’re probably taking a second glance at the title of this article and thinking: “So is this just 1200 words of Jacob calling himself ‘great’ again?”  The following is simply this:  In my time working with some of the best consultants in the business I’ve noticed that many, if not most of us dabble in our own web projects if and when we have the time.  Moving from Webmaster to Web Consultant is just one of several paths that can produce high quality SEO team members.  This just happens to be the path I’m intimately familiar with so I’d like to share some of the qualities I’ve recognized in myself and those around me that I continue to find useful month after month.

Webmasters are Jacks & Jills of All Trades

Site owners wear a preposterous number of hats.  They are simultaneously Editor in Chief, Director of Marketing, Chief Engineer, Database Administrator, Head of Design, Senior SEO and CFO all at once. Those reading this article who currently hold just one of these titles may not appreciate the interconnectedness of each as well as a webmaster who has at one time or another, worn them all.

This ability to zoom out and really understand the entire picture gives a web marketer the ability to not only dig up the correct answers but to know which questions to ask in the first place.  Perhaps you’re trying to weigh the effectiveness of your Facebook fan page.  One proficient in social media may look at the number of fans gained over time.  An analytics geek may look at the number of referrals from Facebook to the domain.

But a consultant with the ability to put on several different hats at once could think to connect AdSense to Analytics, create an advanced segment combining Facebook.com and m.Facebook.com, and run a report showing how much revenue each share brought in per content type.  And further still that same person could pivot to their Editor in Chief hat to decide which content to produce specifically for Facebook shares.  All within the same mind: no unnecessary emails between various hat-wearers, no hesitation.

So the question in the above scenario might have started as “Is Facebook worth the effort?” when a better question from an all-hats-wearing webmaster might be “What sort of content could I (or do I currently) create that is effective on Facebook?”.

Of course it’s not as though the social media expert or GA geek couldn’t have reached the same conclusions but this sort of mental ubiquity comes naturally to the seasoned webmaster.  The ability to understand all of the complicated moving parts of a website’s biology without having to defer to various experts can bring light to opportunities that would have otherwise been missed.

We all shell out the mega-bucks for our database engineers and our directors of social media and their perspectives are certainly important.  But don’t forget about Jack & Jill who, while perhaps aren’t technically “masters” of one specific trade, nevertheless have the ability to effectively comprehend the entire machine as a whole because of their diverse skill set.

Webmasters Expect Infinite Agility

The internet marketing world likes to talk big about agility or “the ability to get shit done like… yesterday”.   Site owners are used to things happening almost instantly.  Want to tweak a title tag?  Give me 30 seconds.  Time to create a page targeted at some new, lucrative keywords you just discovered?  I’ll be done before lunch.  No committees, no bureaucracies, no garnering company-wide “buy-ins”.  As long as you can convince yourself of the investment: consider it done.  This is what I’d call: infinite agility.

Most companies simply cannot function in this manner and probably shouldn’t.  The “Jack of All Trades” is often no substitute for a true master of a single trade for certain problems.  But as a consultant it’s often helpful to have that “pedal to the floor” mentality, I think.  Our clients expect results in a timely manner and my experience as a webmaster puts me firmly into that “Why not right now?” mindset at all times, naturally.

The Power of Physical Experience

Everyone learns differently.  But for my money nothing cements the importance of a properly configured robots.txt file like an improperly configured robots.txt file on your own server.  Having your own, physical encounter with a robots.txt file allows you to speak intelligently about it and to provide the necessary details needed to make sure the job gets done for your clients.  Heck, you could even write it yourself as opposed to forwarding the latest “How To” blog post on the subject.

You can read a blog post or three on “How to Set Up Google Authorship” or even write an article about it yourself.  But if you lack the actual experience of having set this up it’s much harder to troubleshoot the issue when they’re not showing up two months later.

Ultimately experience is the difference between knowledge and wisdom.  All of the Whiteboard Fridays in the world won’t make up for it.

Many Webmasters Deserve an Honorary Degree in Marketing

The key to marketing in any medium is understanding what your audience wants and fulfilling that. As a webmaster you’re forced to get down and dirty with that audience.  You’re responding to tweets, replying to blog comments, organizing writers and generally very much in touch with your average user.  Those seemingly insignificant interactions with your Twitter followers day after day could help decide which piece of content to focus on next.  I’ve had several wildly successful content and page ideas emerge from simple conversations with real readers.  Sometimes these fleeting details can get lost in a game of email “telephone” between colleagues.  An experienced webmaster knows how to put it all together.

Sadly though, it seems that the fancier a marketer’s title gets, the less in touch they seem to be with their audience as they inevitably shed their responsibilities that include having actual “boots on the ground”.  I think a webmaster is less prone to commit this critical fallacy as he or she has seen the benefit of delivering what their audience wants first hand.

Reassurance Through Technical Competence

One of the most nerve wracking moments in any webmaster’s career are those pesky server software updates that need doing periodically. You know they must be done for the good of the realm but nevertheless; your hand trembles, hovering over the “Upgrade to WordPress version 3.X” button knowing that this could be the beginning of a long, painful night with a broken website.  Only a fellow webmaster can truly understand this primal fear.  This perspective allows a consultant to empathize with their client’s similar technical conundrums.

A good web consultant will tell you to make that CMS/Apache/PHP 5 update soon.  A great web consultant has the ability and experience to actually become part of the team, giving specific technical recommendations and offering to order the pizza when things go awry as they sometimes do.

Those are just a few of the more basic webmaster traits that have come in handy as a consultant.  I’m sure many of you reading this now have varying levels of hands-on webmastering experience.  Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

Jacob Klein Webmaster, SEO Consultant at Distilled and Sociable Geek.