On November 3rd, our very own Michael Johnson, Sales Manager at Page One Power, joined SEO From Home — Michael gave an entertaining and informative The Office-themed presentation on how to build content for search. Fans of The Office and SEOs alike will enjoy his presentation below!
Webinar Recording
If you missed the live presentation, you can watch a recording of the event below!
If you want to see who's presenting next on SEO From Home, check out our blog post (continuously updated) or head over to our Twitter profile.
See you next time on SEO From Home!
Show Transcript
0:00:08.3 Ben Jacobsen: Alright, looks like people are jumping into the room, we'll give everyone just a couple of minutes to get settled in there, I’ll make sure you guys are kind of familiar with how this works, so if you guys have questions or answers or... If you want to participate in the chat, of course, we have the chat there at the bottom, also the Q and A button that will pop up all your questions and answers for you, if you wanna answer those or ask those will be kind of holding those are in there, but what we're in, everyone gets settled, if you guys pop into the chat, let us know where you're joining us from, and we'll give everyone just another second or two to get started or... joined in... Happy election day, everyone. I hope you guys are, if you're in the States and joining us, exercising your right to vote today, we will be refraining from any election talk further than that though. But I have the whole analysis ready, Ben, I don't know what... We have a full analysis ready and we have a full giant touch screen board. Jordan’s joining us from Boise.
0:01:16.4 Ben Jacobsen: What's up, Jordan? Good to hear from you again what you're doing well, and it looks like we have a few people joining us and we'll go ahead and just get started. Welcome back, everyone. My name is Ben Jacobson, I am the host of SEO from home, as well as the digital marketing strategist here at Page One Power. And we are here with Michael Johnson, and we're gonna be doing SEO from home. If you guys haven't seen the series before, basically, this is our webinar series to keep the SEO community connected, while we're all kind of working in varied work environments, a lot of us are working from home, but we still wanted to be able to talk and keep connected with a lot of people inside of the industry, so what we're doing is we're sitting down with SEO industry experts and we're talking about a bunch of different topics inside of SEO, marketing last week, we actually sat down and we're talking PPC, so not just SEO, but not only PPC, but PPC in Spanish. So we're running our horizons, we're doing a lot of stuff just outside of SEO too... But that being said, every week we're basically...
0:02:19.7 Ben Jacobsen: Every week we're talking with SEO people from around the industry, and we're trying to give you guys actionable insight and things that you can do on your website and for your business to actually make an impact today. So all of that being said, if you guys wanna check out any of those old episodes, those are actually up on our website at pageonepower.com or on our YouTube channel, that being said, we're also gonna be recording today's episode, so if you guys have to step out for any reason, if you need to check back with work or anything like that, we'll actually have this recorded up and we try to have it up in about 24 to 48 hours for you guys, but that being said, we're really excited 'cause we're actually going to be joined by an alumni here, SEO from home, and also, of course, our very own Michael Johnson. And today, what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be talking about how to rank your content, the Michael Scott way, so I hope we have some of the office fans in the audience today because we're gonna be... There's gonna be a lot of puns, there's gonna be a lot of memes, and it's gonna be awesome.
0:03:21.0 Ben Jacobsen: If you guys are joining us and you want to participate or ask questions later on, you can always do that, of course, on Twitter as well, use #SEOfromhome, or tag Page One Power. Or you can also tag Michael, and that's at MFJohnson89. If you guys are interested in participating even further, we also have an SEO from home Facebook group, so to have people participate in there, ask questions, we have a lot of our former guests in there, we have a lot of people from Page One Power and their answering questions so if you guys, if you need some help or just wanna have somewhere to discuss things, we have that as well for you available. All of that being said, that was a mouthful. Or super excited to be talking with Michael today. And like I mentioned, we're gonna be talking about ranking content the Michael Scott way, so Michael Johnson, tell us what ranking content the Michael Scott way is.
0:04:18.3 Michael Johnson: Thanks so much, be well, I'm excited to chat y'all today and talk a little bit about how to be feared and loved and rank content the Michael Scott way. Really what it comes down to, and what I wanted to talk about was, I've been doing sales here at Page One Power for about eight years now, and over that time, I've helped hundreds of businesses create link building strategies and content strategies, and there's so many pitfalls that I see time and time again that even some of the biggest brands in the world fall into that prevent their content from being successful, and so what I wanted to do is put together a presentation that showed all of those pitfalls, and then from there, provide real life solutions to those issues, so you can apply those to your own content strategy and as kind of a side note, a cool theme for my presentation, and I love The Office, my favorite TV show of all time. And I said, What better theme then Michael Scott from the office. And so while you're gonna be hearing from me, Michael Johnson, I hope that another Michael Scott can have his presence be felt today as we talk, and really just like Michael says, I want people to be afraid of how much they love me, we want...
0:05:28.1 Michael Johnson: We want people to be afraid of how much Google loves you, so the main thing that we want to avoid here is having your company or your brand create Toby Flenderson and content, and to us, what Toby Flenderson on content is, is its content that much like Michael you just look at it and you say, Why are you the way that you are? Every time I try to get you to rank, you make it not that... And that is just the worst thing in the world. So to avoid that, what I find, the things that people run into that cause Toby Flenderson content is number one a failure and keyword research, number two of failure and on page optimization, and number three, a failure when it comes to link building and driving authority to their content, and I know they sound really basic principles, but there are so many ways that you can go wrong in each and every one of these, and some of these ways are not even things I can cover today, but I hope the things that I do cover we'll give you some good ideas. First of all, keyword research, so many brands I talk to, they treat their keyword strategy much like Michael Scott treats sentences, sometimes I'll start a content strategy.
0:06:37.8 Michael Johnson: I don't even know where it's going. I just hope I find it along the way, you can tell that you're in this scenario where it feels like you're just pumping out content piece after content piece of your content piece and you're not getting any traffic, you're not seeing any results from it, if that's you... Just to take a step back, start doing some research and figuring out why the content's not driving traffic, so a few steps for keyword research and some basic points, number one is you need to find out what people are actually searching for, not what you wish that they are searching for... A lot of brands I talk to, they get so caught up on finding every different variation of keywords, buying keywords at the bottom of their funnel that they forget about all the stuff that people are actually searching for. All the questions that they're asking at each step of the marketing funnel, so think about every part of the buyer's journey and the marketing funnel, not just the last few steps, the thing I kind of summarize it with is Google is much more like a library than it is a strip mall.
0:07:44.6 Michael Johnson: People think it’s a place for them to sell their products. Really, that's not what Google is. Google is a place that people go to get information. So if you want your website to succeed on Google, then make your website a great place to go to get information and to learn, and from there, if you're educating people and they're coming to your website, they're gonna gain trust in your brand, they're gonna get familiar with you as they then work their way down that funnel to make a buyers, buying decision, so like I said, Don't just address the bottom of your marketing funnel with your organic search, would you see our research... Think about all those questions that people ask along the way so that you can address those and answer those. So an example of a brand that fell short when it came to keyword research is a company called paycom.com, they're a huge company in the HR payroll software space. Now, this is just a quick screenshot of all their keywords, what's the theme that we see here, 'cause Paycom gets hundreds of thousands visitors a month to their website. What do we see here? Every one of these keywords is branded, so what does that mean? That means unless you don't already know who Paycom is, you're gonna have a very hard time finding them in organic search, and when we look at their blog content, we see a similar story, they've created 683 blog articles on their website, and we're only getting a couple thousand visitors a month to show for it, like Michael says, That's just the worst.
0:09:11.7 Michael Johnson: And we don't wanna run into that, this is a situation where they've created 60083 pieces that aren't getting any traffic, so good of her then to stop, take a step back. Let's figure out where we're going wrong and how we can fix it. So the first thing that I recommend to do when you're just seeing your content's not driving traffic for you, do you use a keyword research, find an example of a brand in your space that is driving a lot of traffic. And what I did here was I filtered down using advanced filters in MOZ by blog traffic for the website, and what you'll see is they have a competitor Patriot software, who all I had to do to find them. We just typed in HR payroll software. They came up on page one as well, they're getting over 100 times the amount of traffic from for blog content when compared to paycom.com, so right there, right away, they could just look to a competitor next door to them and see, Wow, someone's getting a lot of traffic here that we're not getting... Let's figure out what they're doing. So from there, what I like to do is I create exports of SCM Rush data, and I put them into Excel, and then I filter the website by pages, and then underneath that, the keywords associated with that page, what we see from the top performing pages of the website for Patriot software, it's all content from their blog, almost every single page of their top forming pages is blog content for Paycom, there's all at a few blog articles that are showing up there and they're all in the hundreds, where Patriot softwares are all in the thousands sometimes in the tens of thousands.
0:10:42.4 Michael Johnson: So what are we seeing here? Is there any doubt who the bigger brand is, you look at Paycom, people search for Paycom by name like crazy for people probably know who Paycom is, in general, but who's winning in search, who's driving the most traffic, he's introducing themselves to new audiences, without a doubt, it’s Patriot software. There are so many people who are getting to learn about them because they're simply creating content that answers simple questions that HR professionals ask every day questions about pay stubs wages at all those really basic questions, they're answering it and they're introducing their brand to new people. So what should Paycom do? Step one, do competitor and industry research in just 10 minutes, they could come up with a variety of topics right here that are driving tens of thousands of visitors a month, probably over 100,000, and look in the numbers here, over 100,000, 500,000 users a month by just creating this content. So yeah, first one, first step, Find those competitors and do that competitor research, number two, make sure you're integrating your content and your SEO efforts. A lot of the time what happens is that people treat content and SEO as two separate silos, they have the SEO team doing their job and the content team doing theirs, that's where stuff like this happen, so they need to integrate their efforts better, have their SEO team consistently working with their content team and making sure that their content is being properly optimized at each step of the way, and then last, invest in content, now that you've got your strategy in mind, you know the direction to go, now start pumping money into content and developing that content now that you're creating the right content.
0:12:18.8 Michael Johnson: So, is it worth paycom’s time to reassess their keyword strategy and to roll out a new one for their website? The answer is 100% yes. Patriot software is driving 110 times the amount of traffic that Paycom is... Patriot software ranks for 38 times more keywords through their content, and most importantly, just right. Hit you in the pocket book. Paycom would have to pay almost a million dollars per month, 970000 per month to get to get the amount of traffic that their competitor Patriot software is through organic search, so that right there explains it all, and it's almost a million dollars of free traffic that Patriot software is getting by having this content on their website... Alright, the other thing when it comes to keyword research that we need to think about is search intent, and I like Michael's saying here, If you don't get search intent... Right, it can ruin your life. So what is Search intent? What I like to define it as is search intent is the reason behind the query a person who's used it's not just the what of what they're searching, is the why they are searching for it.
0:13:27.4 Michael Johnson: And so why does that matter? A good example, here's this brand called MRP. What MRP does is they create account-based marketing platforms, so they help businesses be more successful with their account-based marketing efforts. Now, if there was a page that Google could rank for account-based marketing, it's probably this one on their website, and what it is, is simply just a product page about account-based marketing that talks about their platform and how helpful it is. Now, the bad news is, is that even though this page has the words account-based marketing on it, and it maybe could rank for it, I'm gonna tell you this, it never will, it'll never show up on page one, and the reason why is 'cause it misses out on search intent, let's look at this just by Googling the word account-based marketing, we can look at some of these results and really quickly get a clear picture on what's going on to result... It's a glossary page. The next one, the Guide to account-based marketing. This is another kind of glory definitional page. What is account-based marketing? Another complete guide to account-based marketing.
0:14:24.1 Michael Johnson: So does Google View the word account-based marketing as a product search or a service search, they think people are trying to find a service for it? No. Google's assuming that people are searching for more information about account based marketing or what is account-based marketing. So if you're gonna be able to rank for this keyword, you need to create a guide about account-based marketing or some kind of informational page about it, because that's what Google is assuming, the searches are when people search for that keyword. So if you wanna make sure you're on the right track when it comes to search intent, it's pretty simple first, just look what's currently ranking for that keyword, type in the keyword, see what kinds of pages are ranking, if you see that there's a pretty consistent pattern that it's informational pages or guides, or maybe it is a product, and there are a lot of transactional pages ranking, great, but if not, you need to make sure that you're creating the right page that aligns with the intent that you're seeing within the search results, if not you're gonna run into a situation where you're trying to get the wrong type of page to rank and it just never will, 'cause Google just doesn't think that's what people are searching for.
0:15:32.3 Michael Johnson: Alright, so for the next section, we're gonna talk about on-page optimization, and we're gonna get extreme with our example, we're not gonna do parkour like Michael, but we are going to talk about snowboarding. So the example I have today is Burton Snowboards. Now, for those of you who are familiar, not quite in the winter sports industry, Burton is one of the most prestigious brands in the snowboarding space, they've been around for decades, their big time, so you would assume that if you were looking for how to pick a snowboard, Burton would rank number one, and probably should rank number one for that keyword, it... They've got a perfect guide about snowboard sizing that... Could rank for that keyword. Answer is no, the brand that ranks is Ivo, who is a retailer that sells a lot of different extreme sports supplies to people. So why isn't Burton to race for this for they're an authority in their space, they have a page... It's probably a good fit for it. What's going on here? So first of all, let's look at what they're missing out on, what they're missing out on is almost six times the amount of traffic they could be getting, Ivo's guide tries over 21000 are almost 21000 visitors a month.
0:16:40.0 Michael Johnson: Burton’s doesn't quite get to 4000 dinars a month, so they're missing out on almost 17, about exactly. 17000 visitors a month by not doing on-page optimization properly. So that's a big thing there. Next thing I wanna look at is keyword research, now, we talk about that in step one, what you can tell the Ivo did really well is they did a good job with their keyword research, and the way you can tell this is that Ivo titled their article, How to choose a snowboard and a snowboard sizing chart. Now, the reason why I support is 'cause snowboards size chart gets 18000 searches per month. The keyword that Burton chose to optimize for, which is snowboarding gets only 13000 and say The numbers bigger when I pulled it up in smartly, 23000 searches per month. So they're missing out on a lot of traffic opportunity, and this is the global amount, so they're actually using a lot of traffic opportunity by not choosing the phrase that has the most search opportunity behind it, so number one, they're starting at a disadvantage there, and that's where they're with the title tag, where they’re falling short. Also, we wanna look at how is Ivo using header tags within their piece, and Ivo has a great structure set up, and I love the way they did this, what they're doing is they're using their header tags as a way to highlight questions that they know people are searching for as they're making the decision to buy a snowboard, then they use the body of their texts to answer that question, and this is awesome because what Google wants to do is to provide people with the best answers to their questions, so with this optimization structure, Ivo is saying, Hey, here's the question, and we are answering it directly in our piece here, so when somebody types in the word...
0:18:24.1 Michael Johnson: What size snowboard should I get? Google knows they can return this article 'cause there's a whole section that answers that exact question, so I love this format. I love the way that they did this, they're answering... They're asking the questions that they know people are searching for and then answering them directly in the piece, that's a great format and a good way to structure your pieces, but again, the main point here is that they have a title tag that describes... Just in their piece, they have header tags, describe what's in each section, and they're using their keyword research to inform that. On the other hand, when we look at Burton's article, they've got just words like weight and boot size... Yeah, you're really familiar with snowboarding, you know... Okay, they're talking about the weight of my board, maybe we're talking about my weight... Actually, that is a little confusing, I think about it. But also just in general, they can be talking about weight lifting, they were talking about weights on a fishing line, booth size, we're talking cowboy boots, moon boots, it'd be better to have more descriptive headers for each section that more directly addressed the subject matter of your piece, so your articles more relevant to those questions, so again, each header tax should accurately describe what's being discussed in the section below it, and that's something that these header tags aren't quite doing for me.
0:19:40.9 Michael Johnson: Alright, so in terms of on page optimization, some key takeaways. Number one, use your keyword research and your understanding of search intent, to know how to optimize your content, use your title and header tax to accurately describe what exists in the article, and then use your header tags to accurately describe what's within the section of their headlining. Use a Q and A format where applicable again, I think that's a great way to show Google that you are directly answering questions and that your article is a good place to get those answers. The other thing I kind of wanna highlight, even thought I didn't talk about it directly earlier, is there's no magic word count that makes your page rank, a lot of people will say like, Oh, it needs to be at least this long or this... There's no magic number that Google says, Great, I'm gonna rank this. It's about comprehensively and completely answering questions in your content is the best answer to a question, that's what's gonna put your best position possible to be able to rank. Alright, so now we're gonna talk about a topic that is near and dear to our hearts here at Page One Power, and that is links.
0:20:44.7 Michael Johnson: Just like Michael says to Jan at the end of Season three, You complete me. Links definitely complete us here at Page One Power. We really kind of carved out our name in the industry as a link builder over the years, so... Why do likes matter? And do they still matter? I like to let Google themselves, give us the answer to that question in an interview, Andre Lippatsev who's a senior strategist to Google was asked what are the primary ranking factors is answer... It's content and its links, so we definitely know that links are a big part of how Google ranks websites, so when it comes to links and earning links and how that works in your content strategy, there's a few things that we wanna talk about. First, some content is link worthy and some is not, if you create a super niche keyword specific article about a specific topic in your industry, you're probably not gonna have a lot of link ability behind that piece. And yeah, it's an important piece for you to have because your audience might be searching for it, but for links, it's not gonna be a winner, so I strongly recommend creating content specifically for the purpose of earning links, often this content is audience-related, and we'll talk about that here in a minute.
0:21:53.2 Michael Johnson: The thing we need, remember that content can create needs to be well-supported within your site architecture, and how do you do that? Through internal linking, the questions you just ask yourself is, if I don't think my content is valuable enough to link to, and why would anybody else wanna link to it? The other question, what signal does it send to Google about the importance of my pages if I'm not even willing to link to them within my own site, so there's so many reasons why I should internally linking, but number one is that it's gonna better support your pages within your site architecture, it's gonna find opportunities to funnel link equity to those pages to help them perform better in organic search and to show their key parts of your website. So when creating linkable content, now, these are those supporting pieces that you're gonna create, they're gonna have internal links, maybe those either conversion pages or more keyboard heavy pages on your site. What should those look like? So to guide the conversation, I always recommend asking these questions first, who would want to link to this... The way I like to answer this is think of the audiences and communities out on the web that are relevant to your products or your services or to your industry, and finding out about the real world by just like the real world is made up of communities and groups of people who congregate and have common interest, the web is just the same, so find the audiences like that, but like to link to resources and good pages and create pages for those audiences.
0:23:14.2 Michael Johnson: The next question is, why would they link to it, so the why is an important part, and the reason, well I like to think about this is, why someone should lead to it, 'cause you're solving a problem for them or you're providing them with a valuable piece of information that's gonna help them in their day-to-day lives, create content that's useful for people, that provides value to people, and that's what people are gonna wanna link to, 'cause at that point, when you do the outreach to try to get some of the link to your content, you don't have to offer them money, you don't have to try to exchange a link or do anything that Google frowned upon, you're simply outreach you and saying, Hey, I've got a great piece of content that your audience is gonna enjoy, here's why you wanna add it to your resource page, it's much easier to pitch content that's writing value to human beings. Next, what makes my pages different to or better than similar pages on the web, if I have one more brand asked me about building links to a mortgage calculator, I'm gonna have some serious problems...
0:24:09.8 Michael Johnson: Google has a mortgage, calculator Google mortgage calculator, every finance website on the web has one, unless you've got the ultimate mortgage calculator with bigger bells and whistles, anybody else, no one's gonna wanna link to it 'cause everybody's already linking to them, so instead, you need to create a unique angle or something superior to what's out there, so try to create something that's unique and providing unique value for clients on the web. Alright, so you go through all this trouble of creating great link-able content, you're internally linking it to port and pages on your site, you're now promoting this content through outreach, trying to get links to it, do those links actually make a difference? And what do we have to show for that? The answer is absolutely yes, and here's an example from a campaign that we worked on in 2019, you can see from the sampling of pages that we built links to, the pages that we built links to, got up into the Page Authority, 30 range, the pages that we didn't remained in the 20s, so link building helped make pages more authoritative in terms of keywords, the client grew in keywords immensely over the year that we worked on the campaign, they got it over 5000 keywords to their keyword-based and traffic, they tripled in traffic to their blog, from our link building efforts by increasing the authority of those pages, so how do links help you?
0:25:28.3 Michael Johnson: Number one, they can make your pages more authoritative, they can help you rank for more keywords as Google seizure contents, trustworthy and authority, they're gonna continue to rank you for more and more keywords, and also it'll help you to drive more traffic, because you're ranking better, more people are gonna find your content, click on your content, and just like this client, we are help them to increase their blog traffic by 250%, so we bank on these kinds of stats. Do you think links are still part... A big part of how Google ranks pages? I would say absolutely, yes. Alright, so we talked about a lot of stuff today. Let's do some basic key takeaway, just like Michael says, Why don't you explain this to me like I'm five for keyword research simplified, find out what people are searching for and understand why they are searching for it, that's making sure you know what keywords are getting search for and then from there, the search intent side, so making sure your content aligns with the intent of search, number two, use logical on page optimization to target keyword themes that matter to you, so I talked about that before using your title tag to a...
0:26:32.8 Michael Johnson: Describe what's in your piece, use your keyword research to inform how to optimize those for the phrases that get the most traffic, and then from there, use your header tags to accurately describe what section, what sections are below them. And again, keyword research can help you to know what kinds of topics people are searching for, what questions that they're asking, that you can optimize your piece the best way possible, and then number three, earn organic back links to content and use internal linking. Again, not all the content on your site can earn links, so create likable content pieces that can earn quality backlinks, internally link those pieces to the pages that you wanna support, and then go out and do all the outreach that your heart desires and try to earn some great quality backlinks to the content that you've created. Alright, well, thank you so much. I wanna do some questions, even though this presentation is supposed to be about, Michael, you can't talk about the office without giving some love to Dwight Shrute So they would have questions, I'd be happy to answer a few of those, and I'll kinda let Ben go ahead and chime in here, so all those.
0:27:33.1 Ben Jacobsen: Awesome, thank you so much, that was fantastic. Especially that last slide, and they're just pointing out those key takeaways, finding things that are actually relevant to the people that you're outreaching to is, I think... To your point with a mortgage calculator, people are searching for that, but people have already found... They've already found that, so finding and reading the room a little bit, understand where your clients are at, where those target sites are at, and then try to meet people where they're at. So finding that middle ground, I think is really important, and then also, of course, like you mentioned, optimizing, the fact that Burton doesn't rank number one is mind-blowing to me. Burton is the pioneer of snowboarding, they created it.
0:28:21.6 Michael Johnson: And I missed it. I missed it to... I had a little blip about it as small on the screen, I forgot to mention it. Their website is more authoritative than the competitor, it's like... there's every reason Google should want to rank that page or that site hire, it's just they haven't optimized it properly, and there's by some link building they can do and support that piece. All these steps are things that they missed out on that are now costing them 17000 visitors a month that are starting for questions on how to pick a snowboard.
0:28:50.8 Ben Jacobsen: Yeah, it's crazy. And I think maybe to play devil's advocate, I think people will be like, Oh well, you have to pay to have that content built, and that content just doesn't come for free that the other brand is building, but man, if you consider your return on investment for something like a link building campaign versus... What was it like? A million a month?
0:29:17.1 Ben Jacobsen: Right, yeah, I guess, but the same sort of example there is your content is one of your biggest factors, and I think when a lot of people start understanding that you can accomplish a lot of the same things that you accomplish with paid ads or social media campaigns, or things like that, except it works all the time, and you don't have to keep feeding that fire every single day, that's kind of a cool feeling, and I think once you do, people see that that momentum perk up, it's kinda cool. So I get a question, Andrew is asking, What should we do if you realize the page you have built for a set of target keywords no longer serves the search intent for those keywords, because search intent has changed a great question. So basically, what if people are no longer searching for... If they're searching for account-based marketing, what if they are actually trying to find software because that becomes the next marketing craze that everyone jumps on, so how would you adjust your pages if you're to do something like that, I think...
0:30:27.3 Michael Johnson: Mean, I would always create a page that aligns with the current search intent, so if your current page does it, it doesn't do it, then create one that does... If it changes, then create a new page, a better aligns with it. If you're a company that does HR software or am or any of those topics, you should have a copy, if you do payroll, you have a comprehensive guide about payroll and how to do payroll as an organization, if you... And then that way when somebody searches for payroll, even though your software might not show up for it, your guide can now show up for it, so it's about just having content that addresses the keyword themes that people are searching for, and as searches that addresses it in the way that people... That Google knows that or assumes that people are searching for it, so... Yeah, I would say if you already have it, great if you don't have it created, if it changes and creates the page that now addresses it, but it's so simple just by seeing what’s ranking currently, you can get a really good idea on what the intent of search is.
0:31:28.0 Ben Jacobsen: Would you recommend modifying the page that is currently on there, or would you recommend creating a new page all together?
0:31:36.7 Michael Johnson: I mean, so if you have a product page, the intent of your page is to sell it, it's a conversion page, so we have a lot of brands that come to us and they say like, Okay, well, can I just add some more helpful information to my product page and make that a link-able asset, and it's like, Well, no, because your page still, it doesn't address such and take, your page is still a buying page, it's not an informational page, so in that scenario, I would say you need to create a new page that is purely informational educational, because that's what the intensive search is.
0:32:09.1 Ben Jacobsen: Awesome, makes sense. But another question that came in, Andrew asks, we link to product pages that eventually run out of stock, what issues should I be aware of here? For example, a bad customer experience, keep in mind, resources are limited, so updating every blog eventually is not scalable.
0:32:29.0 Michael Johnson: Okay, so we're linking to pages... I would redirect links and change links to pages that are products that are currently being offered, those kinds of things to get that it does provide a bad user experience. So definitely would do that. If you can't scale the content creation necessary for it, I mean... That's kind of a tough one, you have thousands and thousands of product pages, you'd assume that you're selling a lot, so you should be able to... The content needed to fuel that, but I mean, I think you just gotta make it a priority to create linkable content and internally link it, and you've got... If you can't keep up with it, then that's it, where you look at maybe hiring an agency to help, you can have people do internal linking audits to go through and check your internal links, these are things that you don't have to hire an employee and pay them thousands of dollars a month, you can find a firm to do a good job of it for a one-time cost that can help you to assess what's going wrong with your internal linking and provide you feedback on how to fix those issues.
0:33:32.0 Michael Johnson: So that might be a good situation to use an agency...
0:33:36.2 Ben Jacobsen: Yeah, and that's kind of tough. Of course, just because any time that you're setting, you're building links to a page that you know is going to go away, you have to keep in mind that you're kind of fighting an uphill battle there a little bit too, if you can pivot that to where you're able to... change. I'm not exactly sure the intricacies of your business, but I'm thinking of like, Okay, we have a limited run of t-shirts, for example, we only do 100, 1000 prints and then they're done. So if you're waking that and you're saying limited print one is the domain... Or excuse me, the URL. And then you're basically saying after three months, limited one is gonna be gone, it's kind of tough because then, as I mentioned, you're putting in a lot of work and a lot of effort to basically have something that is going to be pointing to eventually a dead page essentially, or a page that's going to no longer necessarily serve the best purpose, even if you're saying, Hey, out of stock, go back to the rest of our products. It's still... Again, it's perfectly what you mentioned is it's a hit to your customer experience, 'cause every single click between you or your customer, and the final goal is an opportunity to streamline your process, so maybe you can do larger categories, maybe that are limited teas or… I'm not sure exactly this, I'm just trying to think maybe a little bit outside the box that if you can maybe even do a category page so that it lives a little bit longer, you can build, but then you're missing out on some of the specificity of it.
0:35:34.8 Michael Johnson: Yeah, technical, I'm a content links guy by trade, and technical SEO isn't always my forte, but I know some people, and I'd be happy to answer those questions later and get some feedback from members of my team who are very well learned in technical SEO. We happen to find some feedback, I also kinda worry about... we do have a lot of pages that no long, wide value that warn about index flow and things like that, if you're just... All these pages that serve no purpose in the site, so I'd love to answer that question and you'll get some more in-depth answers for that can maybe get more of the technical side of that issue.
0:36:13.0 Ben Jacobsen: Yeah, great question. And as you can tell, I'm definitely a strategist. I'm very big picture, I'm like, Oh, I just work it. Thank you for that. Another question, which is more beneficial or important to SEO, a page that brings a ton of links or a page that ranks for a specific set of words, so God versus more of a detailed and very...
0:36:37.8 Michael Johnson: Who asked this question? And what I would say, if I had to choose, which is funny 'cause me being a link builder at Page One Power, the link building company, I would pick a keyword focus page, because if you don't have the keywords to rank for, then you can build links to the site, and there's no keywords, you're gonna reformat site that doesn't rank for anything, so I would create the content of the keyword content first and it would be my priority. Awesome. But again, both are absolutely necessary, it doesn't be saying Ignore or the other, do both, but if I have to make the choice...
0:37:23.6 Ben Jacobsen: As we mentioned before, it's keywords or it's content and the links, and so you gotta do both of them, for sure. Awesome, great questions, you guys, we're gonna be wrapping up here in just a few moments, you guys do have any other questions, be sure to get those typed in right now.
0:37:42.6 Michael Johnson: Did you wanna do some office trivia to give away some gift cards?
0:37:47.5 Ben Jacobsen: Absolutely, I was gonna say, if we can get that started here in just a second, for those of you who were willing to stick around, we do have Office trivia and it's gonna be GrubHub, so lunch on us. So we appreciate you guys tuning in, I'll let you go ahead and take it from here and we can get started on some trivia.
0:38:07.4 Michael Johnson: Sounds great. Alright, let's do this, so I'm gonna try not to give away any answers here, I've managed not to, so I'm gonna ask a question from The Office, whoever answers it first, use the chat, I'll let Ben let me know who answered it first, whoever does correctly. We will send you a GrubHub code, and we'll just send that to you after the webinar. So awesome.
0:38:37.2 Ben Jacobsen: And make sure when you guys open up the chat, make sure that the little two is selected for all panels and attendees to make sure everyone can see it, or
0:38:45.7 Michael Johnson: We wanna get the credit that you deserve. So the first question is, What is Pam's favorite yogurt flavor?
0:38:54.6 Ben Jacobsen: This is a good one. I know this one.
0:38:59.8 Michael Johnson: And what is Pam's favorite yogurt flavor? Do we get one yet?
0:39:04.9 Ben Jacobsen: It looks like we got one... looks like Andrew said, mixed berry.
0:39:10.0 Michael Johnson: Correct. Mixed Berry, we learn that in the first season of The Office, Pam likes mixed berry. Alright.
0:39:19.2 Michael Johnson: Who bought Michael's world best? World's Best Boss mug for him, but his world best boss mug for him. That is correct. I bought them myself, he straight up says it. Good job. Great answer. Alright, who did white tick?
0:39:48.5 Ben Jacobsen: Who did what? Who does Dwight tip regularly? It looks like we got... Andrew says his urologist, because he can't pulverize his own kidneys.
0:40:07.4 Michael Johnson: His neurologist at one for a job. I can deliver food, I can drive a taxi, I can and do cut my own hair. I did tip my neurologist, because I'm unable to pulverize my own kidney stones. That is correct.
0:40:21.1 Ben Jacobsen: Love it.
0:40:22.1 Michael Johnson: Alright, bears. Beets and what one.
0:40:26.8 Ben Jacobsen: Everyone's got... There we go.
0:40:32.3 Michael Johnson: Bears beats and Balearic is correct. Alright. What shoes does Kevin wear to Jim and Pam's wedding?
0:40:53.1 Ben Jacobsen: Got it. Andrew says tissue boxes. Correct.
0:41:01.1 Michael Johnson: Those. Remember, he has shoes that are so stinky that the hotel... I just have to destroy them, so he doesn't have shoes for the letting anymore, so... Yeah, so where it is a tissue box, which is really fine, or to pay, I should say who is the main villain of threat level midnight?.
0:41:44.9 Michael Johnson: Nice, we got one. Goldenface. I watched that episode for the first time in a while, a couple of days ago about died laughing, classic episode. Nicely done. Complete this quote from Oscar, Toby, I am ‘blank’ God of wine
0:42:29.1 Ben Jacobsen: Alright, there are very few good Toby moments. That's actually one of them.
0:42:32.6 Michael Johnson: Alright, what was Michael's second job in the episode, money? Telemarketer. Telemarketer for a weight loss product. Nice. Alright, what concert did Mike say He had tickets for... To auction off for crime aid?
0:43:09.2 Michael Johnson: Bruce Springsteen, The Boss. That's right. What's the name of the company? Dwight and Michael gather intel on. It's a competitor of theirs.
0:43:37.0 Ben Jacobsen: Andrew says Prince Paper. It's correct, Prince Paper.
0:43:43.2 Michael Johnson: Remember, Michael goes in as, I think, a lawyer that's looking to buy paper and then Dwight comes in and interviews for a job, and that fires his own sons that you get in the job. That's great. Alright. Oh, here we go. This is the easiest one. What kind of bears is best?
0:44:03.3 Ben Jacobsen: Alright, this is a good one. Alright, what is it? When we got here... What's the the question?
0:44:14.3 Michael Johnson: False Black Bear. Black Bears are best. Guys, come on.
0:44:18.3 Ben Jacobsen: Nice. There we go. Everyone gets that one.
0:44:22.5 Michael Johnson: So hope you enjoyed some office trivia, whoever answered questions, right. Hopefully, we get to ship off some sweet gift cards to you so you can buy yourself some lunch here in the next couple of days.
0:44:43.5 Ben Jacobsen: Absolutely, we will make sure that we get those sent out to you guys, I should be sending you an email, if you guys want trivia, I'll shoot you an email and we'll get you a linked up, if you don't hear from me by the end of the afternoon, definitely reach out to me, but we'll get you guys taken care of, we're super thankful for Michael for joining us and sharing your new presentation. It was fantastic. We are always blessed any time that we get some Office of memes in there and some gifts, so I appreciate you. Thank you guys for joining in and sticking around, join us. We're actually gonna be back Thursday and we're gonna be talking about Andy Crestodina, and were you talking about what's working right now? According to a thousand batter, Andy and his agency actually put together a list every year where they surveyed over a thousand writers and bloggers, and they talk about where their wins and losses are, and so we're gonna be talking about that, so you guys aren't gonna wanna miss that. Join us again the same time next... Excuse me, this Thursday, so just two days from now...
0:45:46.6 Ben Jacobsen: So we're looking forward to it. Thanks again, you guys. We really appreciate it. Stay safe out there and go vote. I appreciate you guys. See you next time.
