This Company Has a Perfect Ecommerce Website Design for Inbound Marketing

There's more to ecommerce website design than you might think. Everyone gets it sort of right, but not every site out there does it all -- except perhaps ModCloth.

I may not shop there personally, but I’m a huge fan of the ModCloth ecommerce inbound marketing model. When breaking down the anatomy of an amazing ecommerce site, ModCloth seems to have it all, from an elegant and intuitive design, to pre-transactional educational content, to email marketing that rarely relies on coupons.

As marketers, we have to get beyond the echo-chamber of sites we personally shop with to find great examples of inbound marketing for ecommerce in action. I don't normally shop ModCloth, but many others do, and they've been highly successful. Let’s take a look at what makes ModCloth such an inbound marketing powerhouse.

Homepage Design

Okay, so saying they do everything well is a bit of a cop out. However, if we look at the welcome banner visitors see upon visiting the page, we see how easy various components of a great ecommerce site are to find.

In one place, we see the page identity, the personalized welcome, a link for customer service, a search bar, special offers, the shopping bag, and an easy-to-understand menu. Wow. That’s a lot of stuff in one space, and yet nothing is crammed or hard to see.

Blog Design

ModCloth must know that business sites with a blog get 55% more visits than sites without. Of course, as you can see by the menu image above, the blog must be part of the main ecommerce site for those visits to be counted in ModCloth’s metrics.

ModCloth uses their blog to move potential buyers through the marketing and sales funnel, just as it’s designed to do. The blog features products, how-to videos, images from customers, and general lifestyle information. In addition to working hard for the business, the blog is also a great way for people to spend a few minutes of downtime.

Their great strength in blogging is that they're targeting the lifestyle, or psychographic dimensions, of their buyer personas. They're not just churning out keyword rich content to rank in search engines; they're building an audience of relevant consumers that they can nurture toward a purchase.

Filtering Options

In addition to the search bar at the top right corner, ModCloth also offers a very intuitive filtering process for every item. Users can search by size, price, designer, and popularity. The easy-click buttons leave little room for error, so customers can quickly narrow down options to find exactly what they need.

As a bonus -- and this shouldn’t be a bonus so much as a way of life -- the filtering options really do return only relevant search results.

Customer Service

While ModCloth customer service does offer an email option, the company also make employees available through a live chat option or by phone for those buyers wanting immediate service. These options can all be found in one spot, too, by simply clicking on their Customer Care link.

But ModCloth doesn’t stop there. Not only can you find someone to talk to about the questions or problems you might have, but you can also reach out to a stylist to receive personalized suggestions and recommendations.

Secure Checkout

Buyers love ModCloth’s checkout process because it’s clear and linear. You can see from the progress bar at the top of the page that you’ll be taken through each step in the process with no links back to previous pages or unnecessary paths toward other pages.

They also make sure to show their security certificates with large icons so they’re visible. This gives buyers the warm and fuzzies, letting them know personal information will be protected at all costs.

Finally, they also offer alternative payment methods so buyers don’t need to share credit card information if they don’t want to. The ability to purchase through PayPal is just one more way ModCloth makes buyers more comfortable.

Up-Front Info

One of the biggest reasons buyers abandon shopping carts before finishing the purchase is because the cost of shipping is a surprise. Well, ModCloth makes sure buyers get up-front info about shipping. As you can see, buyers willing to wait a bit for their new threads can also take advantage of free shipping. Cha-ching.

Fun Product Descriptions

It’s easy enough (and conducive for search engine optimization) to simply list the basic stats, but ModCloth gives whimsical descriptions that still manage to convey the most necessary information. Sometimes, it’s fun to just read about the products even if you can’t afford to buy them all.

Again, the key factor here is the customization of the website experience to the psychographic dimensions of their buyer personas. They're not cold, clinical recitations of the manufacturer specs, they're written with the tone and information that their best customers want to read.

Social Media Integration

This company does a great job of including and engaging with followers and friends on social media. As you can see, visitors have several chances to connect with various social platforms during the shopping experience.

The first time comes on the main page, where all the different accounts are listed. Next, buyers have a chance to Tweet or Pin the items they’re about to buy or just recently purchased. In addition to bragging rights for the customers, it’s also good press for ModCloth.

Finally, the company does a great job of keeping social outlets current. Facebook includes images contributed by users and not just those posted by the company. Twitter asks random questions throughout the day to boost engagement and make followers feel included.

Instagram features heavily on the site as both a user-generated style guide and a place where customers can share videos with their thoughts on the products and the brand.

Pinterest is used for various reasons, but perhaps most importantly as a secondary product catalog. Whoa. These guys are busy.

Customer Voice

Various social media channels aren’t the only ways customers get to share their experiences. Located on each product page is a list of reviews for that particular item.

ModCloth doesn’t censor, either. For each less-than-stellar review, the customer service team reaches out with offers of assistance. Not only do the buyers get a chance to say exactly what they think, but ModCloth also uses that opportunity to improve customer delight.

Smart Email Marketing

Sure, ModCloth sends out discounts for their most loyal customers, but they don’t simply rely on coupons to keep their email marketing on track. Check out this particular email that simply informs users of new features coming soon. What a great way to keep building a relationship between buyer and seller.

Email follow-ups for abandoned carts are just as effective. Images are used to remind the user what they almost purchased, and a fun subject line prompts a smile instead of a growl. Well done, ModCloth.

Responsive Design

Because so many purchases are made on mobile devices, responsive design is a must. Fortunately, my favorite commerce site also makes shopping on smartphones easy.

First, the menu is very easy to read, and there’s plenty of white space around the links to make clicking easy for thumbs.

The images are quite large, and adding them to your cart just takes one click.

Even the filtering options are easy to use, meaning you can drill right down to the very thing you want to buy right there on your phone instead of having to wait until your laptop is in reach.

So, yeah. ModCloth’s ecommerce site is a veritable treasure trove of must-haves, and I’m not just talking about the cool clothes. If you’re looking for a role model, you could do much worse.

 

 

Ask Yoast: Bad slug for Arabic URLs

How to Target Featured Snippet Opportunities - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

Once you've identified where the opportunity to nab a featured snippet lies, how do you go about targeting it? Part One of our "Featured Snippet Opportunities" series focused on how to discover places where you may be able to win a snippet, but today we're focusing on how to actually make changes that'll help you do that. Give a warm, Mozzy welcome to Britney as she shares pro tips and examples of how we've been able to snag our own snippets using her methodology.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Today, we are going over targeting featured snippets, Part 2 of our featured snippets series. Super excited to dive into this.

What's a featured snippet?

For those of you that need a little brush-up, what's a featured snippet? Let's say you do a search for something like, "Are pigs smarter than dogs?" You're going to see an answer box that says, "Pigs outperform three-year old human children on cognitive tests and are smarter than any domestic animal. Animal experts consider them more trainable than cats or dogs." How cool is that? But you'll likely see these answer boxes for all sorts of things. So something to sort of keep an eye on. How do you become a part of that featured snippet box? How do you target those opportunities?

Last time, we talked about finding keywords that you rank on page one for that also have a featured snippet. There are a couple ways to do that. We talk about it in the first video. Something I do want to mention, in doing some of that the last couple weeks, is that Ahrefs actually has some of the capabilities to do that all for you. I had no idea that was possible. Really cool, go check them out. If you don't have Ahrefs and maybe you have Moz or SEMrush, don't worry, you can do the same sort of thing with a Vlookup.

So I know this looks a little crazy for those of you that aren't familiar. Super easy. It basically allows you to combine two sets of data to show you where some of those opportunities are. So happy to link to some of those resources down below or make a follow-up video on how to do just that.

I. Identify

All right. So step one is identifying these opportunities. You want to find the keywords that you're on page one for that also have this answer box. You want to weigh the competitive search volume against qualified traffic. Initially, you might want to just go after search volume. I highly suggest you sort of reconsider and evaluate where might the qualified traffic come from and start to go after those.

II. Understand

From there, you really just want to understand the intent, more so even beyond this table that I have suggested for you. To be totally honest, I'm doing all of this with you. It's been a struggle, and it's been fun, but sometimes this isn't very helpful. Sometimes it is. But a lot of times I'm not even looking at some of this stuff when I'm comparing the current featured snippet page and the page that we currently rank on page one for. I'll tell you what I mean in a second.

III. Target

So we have an example of how I've been able to already steal one. Hopefully it helps you. How do you target your keywords that have the featured snippet?

• Simplifying and cleaning up your pages does wonders. Google wants to provide a very simple, cohesive, quick answer for searchers and for voice searches. So definitely try to mold the content in a way that's easy to consume.
• Summaries do well. Whether they're at the top of the page or at the bottom, they tend to do very, very well.
• Competitive markup, if you see a current featured snippet that is marked up in a particular way, you can do so to be a little bit more competitive.
• Provide unique info
• Dig deeper, go that extra mile, provide something else. Provide that value.

Examples

What are some examples? So these are just some examples that I personally have been running into and I've been working on cleaning up.

• Roman numerals. I am trying to target a list result, and the page we currently rank on number one for has Roman numerals. Maybe it's a big deal, maybe it's not. I just changed them to numbers to see what's going to happen. I'll keep you posted.
• Fix broken links. But I'm also just going through our page and cleaning it. We have a lot of older content. I'm fixing broken links. I have the check my listings tool. It's a Chrome add-on plugin that I just click and it tells me what's a 404 or what I might need to update.
• Fixing spelling errors or any grammatical errors that may have slipped through editors' eyes. I use Grammarly. I have the free version. It works really well, super easy. I've even found some super old posts that have the double or triple spacing after a period. It drives me crazy, but cleaning some of that stuff up.
• Deleting extra markup. You might see some additional breaks, not necessarily like that ampersand. But you know what I mean in WordPress where it's that weird little thing for that break in the space, you can clean those out. Some extra, empty header markup, feel free to delete those. You're just cleaning and simplifying and improving your page.

One interesting thing that I've come across recently was for the keyword "MozRank." Our page is beautifully written, perfectly optimized. It has all the things in place to be that featured snippet, but it's not. That is when I fell back and I started to rely on some of this data. I saw that the current featured snippet page has all these links.

So I started to look into what are some easy backlinks I might be able to grab for that page. I came across Quora that had a question about MozRank, and I noticed that — this is a side tip — you can suggest edits to Quora now, which is amazing. So I suggested a link to our Moz page, and within the notes I said, "Hello, so and so. I found this great resource on MozRank. It completely confirms your wonderful answer. Thank you so much, Britney."

I don't know if that's going to work. I know it's a nofollow. I hope it can send some qualified traffic. I'll keep you posted on that. But kind of a fun tip to be aware of.

How we nabbed the "find backlinks" featured snippet

All right. How did I nab the featured snippet "find backlinks"? This surprised me, because I hardly changed much at all, and we were able to steal that featured snippet quite easily. We were currently in the fourth position, and this was the old post that was in the fourth position. These are the updates I made that are now in the featured snippet.

Clean up the title

So we go from the title "How to Find Your Competitor's Backlinks Next Level" to "How to Find Backlinks." I'm just simplifying, cleaning it up.

Clean up the H2s

The first H2, "How to Check the Backlinks of a Site." Clean it up, "How to Find Backlinks?" That's it. I don't change step one. These are all in H3s. I leave them in the H3s. I'm just tweaking text a little bit here and there.

Simplify and clarify your explanations/remove redundancies

I changed enter your competitor's domain URL — it felt a little duplicate — to enter your competitor's URL. Let's see. "Export results into CSV," what kind of results? I changed that to "export backlink data into CSV." "Compile CSV results from all competitors," what kind of results? "Compile backlink CSV results from all competitors."

So you can look through this. All I'm doing is simplifying and adding backlinks to clarify some of it, and we were able to nab that.

So hopefully that example helps. I'm going to continue to sort of drudge through a bunch of these with you. I look forward to any of your comments, any of your efforts down below in the comments. Definitely looking forward to Part 3 and to chatting with you all soon.

Thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I look forward to seeing you all soon. See you.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Resume Format Tips You Need to Know in 2018 [Sample Formats Included]

Think of a really good print advertisement you've seen lately. What did you like about it? Chances are that while the content of that ad was important, the design played a big role in drawing you in.

It's important to think of your resume like an advertisement to job recruiters. Writing a standout resume goes beyond the content you put in there -- the format plays an important role, too. To recruiters, it speaks volumes about how you collect your thoughts and organize your ideas. So you'll want to make sure it's easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to digest. That means choosing the right sizing for your headers, picking the right fonts, bolding and italicizing where appropriate, and so on.

Get 10 free marketing resume templates right now.

To learn how to format a resume properly, check out the infographic below from Resume Templates 101. Then, under this infographic, see an example list of things a great resume format includes to truly stand out from the other candidates.

The Best Resume Format

There's no such thing as a perfect resume. But depending on your industry, you can pick the right assortment of attributes above and create something the hiring manager won't soon forget.

Here's an example of a resume for an entry-level graphic designer -- a role that some say faces the highest standards for resume format, given the expected skills of the applicant.

Font Type: Century Gothic

This font is a more wide-set sans-serif typeface. Modern design is all about clean typography, making tail-less fonts ideal. The wide-set appearance helps entry-level applicants make good use of empty space when they don't have much experience to report on.

Font Size: 12pt

Anything bigger than 12pt body text in Century Gothic can risk looking a bit unprofessional. This size works well for those who have limited content, and continues to work well as his or her career grows.

Font Style: Bold Name and Job Title

Between underlines, boldface, and italics, boldface is this applicant's best bet for the font type they're using. Italicized Century Gothic isn't distinguished enough from standard Century Gothic to use both in the same document, and underlines can dilute the clean appearance you get with this font type.

Bolding the first and last name at the top -- and every job title, skill, and field of study beneath it -- establishes a clean but obvious hierarchy from the top of the resume to the bottom.

Header Style: Standard, 15pt

Headers over Education, Experience, Skills, and similar resume sections should be visibly bigger than the body text, but not overpowering. A standard (unstylized) header in 15pt font governs each section of the resume nicely and doesn't clash with the boldfaced skills and job titles beneath it.

Name Style: Standard, 17pt

The first and last name should be at least another 2 points larger than each header. No matter what your industry or experience level, it's important that your name is the biggest text on your resume. Hiring managers look at a lot of these things every day, and you need them to remember your name -- if nothing else.

Why standard and not bold? I happen to think Century Gothic looks best as is, especially as the font size increases.

Resume Layout

As for the resume's layout, consider this order: Name, Contact Info, Education, Skills, Experience, and Awards. New professionals need to front-load their education because it's the most relevant item on their resume, while their "Skills" section showcases the editing software and equipment that is critical to their qualifications for any job opening.

Even if you're not an entry-level designer, the above infographic -- and following example -- is a model for how you can highlight the parts of your background that are most important to your employer. Now, get to writing!

 

Here's What Facebook Says It's Doing to Protect Election Security

Earlier today, members of Facebook's staff held a small press event with a status update on efforts to prevent its platform from being weaponized to influence major national events like elections.

Last year, Facebook came under fire when it was revealed that it had been weaponized by foreign actors to spread misinformation and divisive content in hopes of influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Facebook published a transcript of today's remarks, where VP of Product Management Guy Rosen indicated the network would be focusing on four core areas of election protections:

1. "Combating foreign interference"
2. "Removing fake accounts"
3. "Increasing ads transparency"
4. "Reducing the spread of false news"

Here's a look at the work Facebook says it's doing in each area.

1. "Removing Fake Accounts"

This might be the most complex and far-reaching area where Facebook will be putting new efforts into place. In order to remove fake accounts, Facebook's Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos explained, the network will have to identify fake identities and audiences alongside false narratives and facts.

Doing so begins by identifying motives, which boils down to three main areas: influencing public debate, money, and what the "classic internet 'troll,'" Stamos said. 

Fake accounts motivated by the first item on the list range from what Stamos called "ideologically motivated groups" to state intelligence agencies, whose target audiences could exist within their own countries or others.

The second motivator, money, is the most common one. Many times, these bad actors stand to financially profit by driving traffic to their sites -- even if it means, speculatively, doing so by linking to false or divisive content.

Countering that, Stamos said, will require decreasing the account's profits by increasing its operational costs -- which is how Facebook has previously curbed activity from spammers. Facebook has made similar efforts in the past to penalize content with "clickbait" link titles that don't necessarily lead to quality or genuine content.

These motivations can vary or even be combined according to the event the actor is trying to influence. That's why Stamos said Facebook will be enlisting the help of external experts who are familiar with the various geographical or cultural factors that could play a role in what different actors are trying to accomplish.

2. "Combating Foreign Interference"

Samidh Chakrabarti, a product manager at Facebook, spoke on how proactive measures to combat bad actors of foreign origin relate to some of the efforts to combat fake accounts -- which, he said, is one of the most common ways such bad actors "hide". 

At this point, Chakrabarti explained, Facebook blocks "millions" of fake accounts on a daily basis as they're being created, which can help stop them before they can create and distribute content. Machine learning is said to play a major role here, which has been trained to identify suspect activity without having scan actual content.

Previously, members of the Facebook community were responsible for reporting what looked like suspicious activity, especially anything that might pertain to an election. Now, Chakrabarti said, Facebook will deploy an "investigative tool" that proactively looks for this kind of activity, like the creation of Pages with foreign origin that are sharing misinformation. Once these Pages are identified, they are sent to Facebook's security team for a manual review to determine if Community Standards or Terms of Service have been violated.

The efforts here appear to be two-fold: machine learning capabilities that stop the creation of these pages before they can distribute content, as well as technology that seeks out existing Pages engaging in such activity. For the latter, Chakrabarti said the manual process is quick, though he didn't provide a specific average time frame. 

These tools were utilized as recently as last December during a special Senate race in the state of Alabama, when efforts to identify foreign interference led to the discovery of politically-focused bad actors based in Macedonia, who seemed to be spreading misinformation leading up to that election. They were later blocked from Facebook.

3. "Increasing Ads Transparency"

Part of the effort to remove fake accounts also plays into actions that will verify the authenticity of the ads that accounts want to post.

That will include a new feature called View Ads, which has been tested in Canada and will be rolled out globally this summer. As the name suggests, it allows users to view any ads the Page is running under its "About" section. 

The summer rollout will come in the months leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections -- and prior to that, said Product Management Director Rob Leathern, a new ad review and verification process will begin, which will require all Page admins to submit government-issued IDs and provide a physical mailing address before they can publish any promoted content. 

That way, Facebook can confirm the physical location and identification of advertisers, in part by physically mailing a letter to the address provided with an access code that can only be used by that specific admin for that particular Page. In addition to this process, advertisers must declare which, if any, candidate, organization, or business they represent.

And once the verification process is complete, Leathern explained, ads pertaining to an election will be clearly labeled as such in both Facebook and Instagram feeds, including the individual, business, or organization that paid for it.

And this summer, he said, Facebook will unveil a public ad history archive that contains any such content with a political label. Each entry will include details like the amount spent on the ad, as well as the number of impressions it received and demographic information about the audience it reached. The archive will keep this information for up to four years after the ad ran.

4. "Reducing the Spread of False News"

Finally, Product Manager Tessa Lyons spoke to Facebook's effort to curb the spread of such misinformation as false news, which will largely be powered by partnerships with fact-checkers.

To determine which content needs to be fact-checked, Lyons said, the platform will use various "signals" that include reports from Facebook users themselves. From there, fact-checkers can rate a story as false -- and if they do, its ranking in the News Feed will be dropped, which leads to an average of 80% fewer views.

Anyone who's shared the story in the past will be warned about this fact-check, as will anyone who tries to share it in the future -- and if it does appear in someone's News Feed, it will be displayed with information from those who fact-checked it. That information will help to teach a machine learning module to identify these stories quicker, without human intervention. 

These efforts will apply to text, photos, and videos -- and will also play into efforts to increase ad transparency and combat fake accounts. Any Page that habitually shares false news, Lyons said, will face reduced distribution, and lose its advertising and monetization privileges, "stopping them from reaching, growing, or profiting from their audience."

Currently, Facebook has fact-checking partners in six countries, including the U.S., where the platform has joined forces with Associated Press reporters to identify misinformation and false news relating to the country's upcoming elections, whether local, state, or federal. These reporters will also be tasked with disproving false claims made by such stories.

Lyons noted that these efforts are "a place to start."

"Like any company that’s had a PR crisis, Facebook is trying to take control of and own the misinformation narrative," said HubSpot Social Campaign Strategy Associate Henry Franco. "It looks like the company is taking some pretty serious steps to address it, too, both in terms of identifying and prohibiting bad actors."

But as Lyons remarked -- it's a start. "What remains to be seen," Franco said, "is whether it's enough to earn back the trust of users."

MozCon 2018: The Initial Agenda

Posted by Trevor-Klein

With just over three months until MozCon 2018, we're getting a great picture of what this year's show will be like, and we can't wait to share some of the details with you today.

We've got 21 speakers lined up (and will be launching our Community Speaker process soon — stay tuned for more details on how to make your pitch!). You'll see some familiar faces, and some who'll be on the MozCon stage for the first time, with topics ranging from the evolution of searcher intent to the increasing importance of local SEO, and from navigating bureaucracy for buy-in to cutting the noise out of your reporting.

Topic details and the final agenda are still in the works, but we're excited enough about the conversations we've had with speakers that we wanted to give you a sneak peek. We hope to see you in Seattle this July 9–11!

If you still need your tickets, we've got you covered:

Pick up your ticket to MozCon!

The Speakers

Here's a look at who you'll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we've already worked out:

---

Jono Alderson

Mad Scientist, Yoast

The Democratization of SEO

Jono will explore how much time and money we collectively burn by fixing the same kinds of basic, "binary," well-defined things over and over again (e.g., meta tags, 404s, URLs, etc), when we could be teaching others throughout our organizations not to break them in the first place.

As long as we "own" technical SEO, there's no reason (for example) for the average developer to learn it or care — so they keep making the same mistakes. We proclaim that others are doing things wrong, but by doing so we only reinforce the line between our skills and theirs.

We need to start giving away bits of the SEO discipline, and technical SEO is probably the easiest thing for us to stop owning.

In his talk, he'll push for more democratization, education, collaboration, and investment in open source projects so we can fix things once, rather than a million times.

---

Stephanie Briggs

Partner, Briggsby

Search-Driven Content Strategy

Google's improvements in understanding language and search intent have changed how and why content ranks. As a result, many SEOs are chasing rankings that Google has already decided are hopeless.

Stephanie will cover how this should impact the way you write and optimize content for search, and will help you identify the right content opportunities. She'll teach you how to persuade organizations to invest in content, and will share examples of strategies and tactics she has used to grow content programs by millions of visits.

---

Rob Bucci

CEO, STAT Search Analytics

"Near me" or Far:
How Google May Be Deciding Your Local Intent for You

In August 2017, Google stated that local searches without the "near me" modifier had grown by 150% and that searchers were beginning to drop geo-modifiers — like zip code and neighborhood — from local queries altogether. But does Google still know what searchers are after?

For example: the query [best breakfast places] suggests that quality takes top priority; [breakfast places near me] indicates that close proximity is essential; and [breakfast places in Seattle] seems to cast a city-wide net; while [breakfast places] is largely ambiguous.

By comparing non-geo-modified keywords against those modified with the prepositional phrases "near me" and "in [city name]" and qualifiers like “best,” we hope to understand how Google interprets different levels of local intent and uncover patterns in the types of SERPs produced.

With a better understanding of how local SERPs behave, SEOs can refine keyword lists, tailor content, and build targeted campaigns accordingly.

---

Neil Crist

VP of Product, Moz

The Local Sweet Spot: Automation Isn't Enough

Some practitioners of local SEO swear by manual curation, claiming that automation skips over the most important parts. Some swear the exact opposite. The real answer, especially when you're working at enterprise scale, is a sweet spot in the middle.

In this talk, Neil will show you where that spot is, why different verticals require different work, and some original research that reveals which of those verticals are most stable.

---

Dana DiTomaso

President and Partner, Kick Point

Traffic vs. Signal

With an ever-increasing slate of options in tools like Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studio, marketers of all stripes are falling prey to the habit of "I'll collect this data because maybe I'll need it eventually," when in reality it's creating a lot of noise for zero signal.

We're still approaching our metrics from the organization's perspective, and not from the customer's perspective. Why, for example, are we not reporting on (or even thinking about, really) how quickly a customer can do what they need to do? Why are we still fixated on pageviews? In this talk, Dana will focus our attention on what really matters.

---

Rand Fishkin

Founder, SparkToro, Moz, & Inbound.org

A man who needs no introduction to MozCon, we're thrilled to announce that Rand will be back on stage this year after founding his new company, SparkToro. Topic development for his talk is in the works; check back for more information!

---

Oli Gardner

Co-Founder, Unbounce

Content Marketing Is Broken and Only Your M.O.M. Can Save You

Traditional content marketing focuses on educational value at the expense of product value, which is a broken and outdated way of thinking. We all need to sell a product, and our visitors all need a product to improve their lives, but we're so afraid of being seen as salesy that somehow we got lost, and we forgot why our content even exists.

We need our M.O.M.s!

No, he isn't talking about your actual mother. He's talking about your Marketing Optimization Map — your guide to exploring the nuances of optimized content marketing through a product-focused lens.

In this session you'll learn:

• Data and lessons learned from his biggest ever content marketing experiment, and how those lessons have changed his approach to content
• A context-to-content-to-conversion strategy for big content that converts
• Advanced methods for creating "choose your own adventure" navigational experiences to build event-based behavioral profiles of your visitors (using GTM and GA)
• Innovative ways to productize and market the technology you already have, with use cases your customers had never considered

---

Casie Gillette

Senior Director, Digital Marketing, KoMarketing

The Problem with Content & Other Things We Don't Want to Admit

Everyone thinks they need content but they don't think about why they need it or what they actually need to create. As a result, we are overwhelmed with poor quality content and marketers are struggling to prove the value.

In this session, we'll look at some of the key challenges facing marketers today and how a data-driven strategy can help us make better decisions.

---

Emily Grossman

Mobile Product Marketer & App Strategist

What All Marketers Can Do about Site Speed

At this point, we should all have some idea of how important site speed is to our performance in search. The mobile-first index underscored that fact yet again. It isn't always easy for marketers to know where to start improving their site's speed, though, and a lot of folks mistakenly believe they need developers for most of those improvements. Emily will clear that up with an actionable tour of just how much impact our own work can have on getting our sites to load quickly enough for today's standards.

---

Russ Jones

Principal Search Scientist, Moz

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Russ is our principal search scientist here at Moz. After a decade as CTO of an agency, he joined Moz to focus on what he's most interested in: research and development, primarily related to keyword and link data. He's responsible for many of our most forward-looking techniques.

At MozCon this year, he's looking to focus on cutting through bad metrics with far better metrics, exploring the hidden assumptions and errors in things our industry regularly reports, showing us all how we can paint a more accurate picture of what's going on.

---

Justine Jordan

VP Marketing, Litmus

A veteran of the MozCon stage, Justine is obsessed with helping marketers create, test, and send better email. Named an Email Marketer Thought Leader of the Year, she is strangely passionate about email marketing, hates being called a spammer, and still gets nervous when pressing send.

At MozCon this year, she's looking to cover the importance of engagement with emails in today's world of marketing. With the upcoming arrival of GDPR and the ease with which you can unsubscribe and report spam, it's more important than ever to treat people like people instead of just leads.

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Michael King

Managing Director, iPullRank

You Don't Know SEO

Or maybe, "SEO you don't know you don't know." We've all heard people throw jargon around in an effort to sound smart when they clearly don't know what it means, and our industry of SEO is no exception. There are aspects of search that are acknowledged as important, but seldom actually understood. Mike will save us from awkward moments, taking complex topics like the esoteric components of information retrieval and log-file analysis, pairing them with a detailed understanding of technical implementation of common SEO recommendations, and transforming them into tools and insights we wish we'd never neglected.

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Cindy Krum

CEO & Founder, MobileMoxie

Mobile-First Indexing or a Whole New Google

The emergence of voice-search and Google Assistant is forcing Google to change its model in search, to favor their own entity understanding or the world, so that questions and queries can be answered in context. Many marketers are struggling to understand how their website and their job as an SEO or SEM will change, as searches focus more on entity-understanding, context and action-oriented interaction. This shift can either provide massive opportunities, or create massive threats to your company and your job — the main determining factor is how you choose to prepare for the change.

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Dr. Pete Meyers

Marketing Scientist, Moz

Dr. Peter J. Meyers (AKA "Dr. Pete") is a Marketing Scientist for Seattle-based Moz, where he works with the marketing and data science teams on product research and data-driven content. Guarding the thin line between marketing and data science — which is more like a hallway and pretty wide — he's the architect behind MozCast, the keeper of the Algo History, and watcher of all things Google.

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Britney Muller

Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

Britney is Moz's senior SEO scientist. An explorer and investigator at heart, she won't stop digging until she gets to the bottom of some of the most interesting developments in the world of search. You can find her on Whiteboard Friday, and she's currently polishing a new (and dramatically improved!) version of our Beginner's Guide to SEO.

At MozCon this year, she'll show you what she found at the bottom of the rabbit hole to save you the journey.

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Lisa Myers

CEO, Verve Search

None of Us Is as Smart as All of Us

Success in SEO, or in any discipline, is frequently reliant on people’s ability to work together. Lisa Myers started Verve Search in 2009, and from the very beginning was convinced of the importance of building a diverse team, then developing and empowering them to find their own solutions.

In this session she’ll share her experiences and offer actionable advice on how to attract, develop and retain the right people in order to build a truly world-class team.

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Heather Physioc

Director of Organic Search, VML

Your Red-Tape Toolkit:
How to Win Trust and Get Approval for Search Work

Are your search recommendations overlooked and misunderstood? Do you feel like you hit roadblocks at every turn? Are you worried that people don't understand the value of your work? Learn how to navigate corporate bureaucracy and cut through red tape to help clients and colleagues understand your search work — and actually get it implemented. From diagnosing client maturity to communicating where search fits into the big picture, these tools will equip you to overcome obstacles to doing your best work.

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Mike Ramsey

President, Nifty Marketing

The Awkward State of Local

You know it exists. You know what a citation is, and have a sense for the importance of accurate listings. But with personalization and localization playing an increasing role in every SERP, local can no longer be seen in its own silo — every search and social marketer should be honing their understanding. For that matter, it's also time for local search marketers to broaden the scope of their work.

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Wil Reynolds

Founder & Director of Digital Strategy, Seer Interactive

Excel Is for Rookies:
Why Every Search Marketer Needs to Get Strong in BI, ASAP

The analysts are coming for your job, not AI (at least not yet). Analysts stopped using Excel years ago; they use Tableau, Power BI, Looker! They see more data than you, and that is what is going to make them a threat to your job. They might not know search, but they know data. I'll document my obsession with Power BI and the insights I can glean in seconds which is helping every single client at Seer at the speed of light. Search marketers must run to this opportunity, as analysts miss out on the insights because more often than not they use these tools to report. We use them to find insights.

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Alexis Sanders

Technical SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Alexis works as a Technical SEO Account Manager at Merkle, ensuring the accuracy, feasibility, and scalability of the agency’s technical recommendations across all verticals. You've likely seen her on the Moz blog, Search Engine Land, OnCrawl, The Raven Blog, and TechnicalSEO.com. She's got a knack for getting the entire industry excited about the more technical aspects of SEO, and if you haven't already, you've got to check out the technical SEO challenge she created at https://TechnicalSEO.expert.

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Darren Shaw

Founder, Whitespark

At the forefront of local SEO, Darren is obsessed with knowing all there is to know about local search. He organizes and publishes research initiatives such as the annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey and the Local Search Ecosystem.

At MozCon this year, he'll unveil the newest findings from the Local Search Ranking Factors study, for which he's already noticing significant changes from the last release, letting SEOs of all stripes know how they need to adjust their approach.

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