MozCon 2012 Notes – Day 2

Here are my rough notes from the second day at MozCon. You can check out my notes from day 1 here.

Forgive me for the abrupt nature of the content, I just wrote down the things I found notable, useful or actionable from my own perspective, so this isn’t intended as an overview of the whole day.

Thanks a ton to all the excellent presenters, and if your stuff isn’t on this list that’s not because it wasn’t great material!

Richard Baxter

A super cool, but slightly over my head look at using Excel to do all sorts of crazy stuff

http://www.slideshare.net/richardbaxterseo/seogadget-links-api-extension-for-excel-mozcon-2012

JSON/API calls into excel are neat
Resolve IP API (Wipmania.com) > Email from whois > PR, etc. could build a pretty cool data sheet
Or, a spreadsheet that gives contact info for your competitors best links
Find high volume low competition keywords
Adwords API extension for Excel
Mozscape API extension for Excel
Neils Bosma

Cyrus Shepard

Talking about keeping your content clean and clear and under control

Google+ stats
Reconsider embed codes (for infographics, etc.), they can lead to spammy looking anchor text and might look like shoddy link building
Don’t link iffy stuff to your home page (ie. if you are using an embed code), so in the worst case you can 404 a sub page
Ebooks vs infographics
- easy
- less expensive
- evergreen
- less/no saturation
- repurposable
- not spammy
Press releases, only if truly newsworthy
Hire a pro
- contenly
- odesk
- guru
- elance
- freelancer
Use anchor text organically. “Click here” is not as shameful as it once was
Do what you love doing, period.

Ian Lurie

Say what matters

http://www.portent.com/blog/internet-marketing/say-what-matters-my-mozcon-2012-presentation.htm

Link bundle
Stop link building, start AUDIENCE building
~~Content marketing~~ Marketable content
Generate content to say what matters
Idea graphing
- Start creating an ad on Facebook to get a look at the IdeaGraph, find and use related (though not necessarily similar) ideas for content directions
- Portent idea graph portent.com/graph

Rhea Drysdale

Reputation Management

Create brand insurance
- use listening tools
- work towards SERP domination for your brand name
- adopt social media policies
https://brandmentions.com/socialmention
It’s less likely that people will say “these guys suck” if they have a connection/relationship with a real person from the company
Set up monitoring tools (obvious, but many don’t)

Marty Weintraub

Use Facebook ads to determine demo/send traffic to a landing page, and then retarget with specialized ads
Doubleclick retargeting
http://www.ppchero.com/

Pete Meyers

Keeping up on the Google algo

http://mozcast.com/

Jenny Lam

High level design info

There is ROI in design (for every dollar gillette spent on design for venus, they got $415 back)
Things to look for/do when hiring a designer
- formal training
- talks about user, brand, tech
- no delicate flower syndrome
- protolfio itself is well deigned
- has shipped something
- have a desnior designer review the work
What makes things aesthetically pleasing
- harmony
  - consistency in style, tone, voice,
  - Ex. Mail Chimp design persona
- integrity
  - quality
  - soundness
  - designing for users does not equal pandering
  - integrity & genuineness in personality
- radiance
  - dont ignore small details
  - http://littlebigdetails.com/
critique doesn’t equal art direction

AJ Kohn

Awesome look at Google +

Google owns the spice… don’t ignore this
Google + is not a ghost town, and it’s growing rapidly, there’s still an opportunity to be ahead of the crowd
Google + influences people’s search results in an incredibly powerful way
Profile tips
- connect your social profiles on G+ profile
- use rel=publisher for business pages
- words matter.. use them
Migration/Growth (get FB and Twitter people to circle you)
- offer exclusive content (you!)
- hang out on air
- tell them to .. circle you
Sharing tips
- tame your ego
- re-share others’ stuff
Formatting
- create a title tag (first line of a post serves as the title tag)
- format your title in bold
- make posts readable & skimmable
Engagement
- save searches
- create an evangelist circle (a specific circle for those who share your stuff the most) and treat them special 🙂
- comments or reshares are better signs than +1
- Ripples
- flag down (but not too much)
- comment
+1 button tips
- have them on your site
- optimize the snippet
G+ social signals
- meh
Authorship
- value/authority is moving towards authors, good writers will be rewarded on whichever platform they write
- More clicky SERP results (avatar)
- Best validation method: content > about page > about page to g+ and back
Author rank
- not happening yet
- will make the link graph smarter