Pubcon Las Vegas 2015: Branding, Mobile, and Beyond

Tandem Interactive's Organic Search Manager/Editor Kimberly McSweeney at Pubcon Las Vegas 2015.

This year, I was fortunate enough to attend Pubcon Las Vegas with Joe in the beginning of October, and to say that I learned a wealth of knowledge during those short four days would be an understatement. For those who may not know much about Pubcon, it is the world’s leading online marketing conference and has been named a must-attend conference by Forbes, and I have to say – they hit the nail on the head.

If you missed Pubcon you arguably missed the largest sharing of SEO/SEM and PPC knowledge to ever take place under one roof. With daily speakers, such as the leaders of the search marketing industry, this was the place to be for those who do SEO and/or have a business or startup.

After day one at Pubcon, it was clear that the theme for the year was branding. Pretty much, if your company is not creating content that serves consumers and gets your name out in the world as a reputable company that is not just there to take your business, you are not doing enough to meet the needs of users. Users don’t only want answers to their questions, they want answers that exceed far beyond the question they asked. Although this may sound impossible, with amazingly engaging content – it isn’t. As Founder of Seer Interactive Wil Reynolds put it, if you are not creating the best piece of content ever written on a subject, you are not doing content right. Users want content that will serve them in a way that will make them better. They want to read your content and be able to take something from it that makes them better, smarter, and…well…serves their egos.

“People don’t buy products, they buy better versions of themselves.” – Wil Reynolds

Once you have the most amazing piece of content created – you need to socialize it. Coupled with creating the best optimized content, socializing content will help build your brand. If you write amazing content and no one can see it on multiple social media platforms, your brand is not going to be engraved in their brains. Users’ minds need to constantly see your ads, your helpful content that answers their questions, your videos, your photos, and logos on Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and whatever the new social media platform will be, in order for them to build awareness of your brand, as well as trust.

Of course, every business with a website wants to know about mobile. As the industry leaders put it at Pubcon, if you are just now thinking about mobile, you are behind. If you are thinking that mobile is going to be big, you are behind. Mobile is here. Mobile is now. If your site is not mobile-friendly you can bet that users are going to your competitor who is mobile compliant. Not only should your site be mobile- friendly already, but if your mobile load times are slow – you can bet users are moving on to a competitor. It may be sad for you and your business, but it is true. With every new generation, attention spans are decreasing and demands are increasing – you need to take the heat and turn it into fire for your company, or get out of the kitchen.

Pubcon Las Vegas 2015 featured the following keynote speakers and hyperlinked is Tandem’s live-blogged coverage for each:

Rand Fishkin: Founder of Moz:  SEO In A Two Algorithm World

Gary Illyes: Google: Generations XYZ

Wil Reynolds: Seer Interactive: The High Cost of Free Traffic

Daune Forrester: Bing: Data is the New Oil

John Brown & Richard Zippel: Google AdSense: Open Format Q&A

Guy Kawasaki: Canva: 10 Tips for Perfecting Your Marketing Campaign in the Age of Social Media

Other Pubcon Sessions Covered by Tandem:

Micro-Moments with Google’s Matt Rogers

Google’s Leo Sei Unmasks AdWords Automated Scripts

Jeffrey Eisenberg (chief Executive at BuyerLegends.com) and Alex Harris (creative director at AlexDesigns.com): High Conversion Landing Pages and the User Persona, The Most Popular Tools for Creating Landing Pages and Campaigns, 8 Measurement Terms for Buyer Legends

Frederick Vallaeys on Google Quality Score: What It Is and How to Improve It

Frederick Vallaeys: AdWords Scripts: Automation and Bid Management, Pubcon Tracks Conversions with Frederick Vallaeys

Michael Gray (Atlas Web Services president and owner of GrayWolfSEO.com): Top WordPress Plugins to Clean Up and Speed Up Your Site

Barry Adams (founder of Polemic Digital): Barry Adams: Crawl Waste & Optimization

Perfecting PPC Ads with Brad Geddes

Keywords that Can Actually Increase Traffic to your Site

If you own a business and are currently paying a marketing team to build out your content…make sure that they are building content that can actually increase traffic to your site, WITHOUT keyword stuffing.

As a business owner, you are probably well aware of the negative effects that Black Hat SEO can have on your site and more importantly, on your relationship with search engine master Google.

If you are not aware, here are some tips to avoid a penalty and keep in mind for organic content:

• Google wants websites that produce QUALITY content, NOT necessarily QUANTITY. While it is good to be building your brand with a decent amount of content each month, the quantity of keywords should not be overbearing. If you produce content that has one of your keywords, sprinkled around once every 100-150 words or so, you are on the right track. If your content pumps keywords each sentence, you will most likely be flagged. While it is great that your business is getting a lot of traffic, if you are not giving the searcher the information they want, that traffic to your site is essentially useless and they will leave your page, after they deem you as unreliable.

• Choosing the right keywords for your brand can be more difficult than you think. You may know the obvious keywords, but the truth is, unless you already have an internet presence, you will not rank for those keywords as compared to larger competitors. However, there are ways to determine / find the ideal organic content keywords for your product.

To find ideal keywords, your marketer should be using Google Adwords and MozPro in coordination. Why use both tools you ask? Start in Google Adwords. Search for keywords that have a good amount of AVERAGE MONTHLY SEARCHES and a LOW to MEDIUM COMPETITION STATUS. Then, use MozPro : Research Tools : Keyword Difficulty, to plug in the keyword you found with Adwords, in order to see its DIFFICULTY SCORE and SERP Analysis Report.

You will notice that if the keyword has a Difficulty Score of 60% or more, then it will be a highly competitive keyword that you should not use.

To further explain this: The Lower the Keyword Difficulty Score on MozPro and the Lower the Competition via Adwords, the easier it will be for your company to create individual content pages to achieve top results.

HOWEVER, this only applies for smaller businesses or lower authority domains; meaning a local moving company trying to rank for moving key terms against a large, nationwide moving company.

The SERP Analysis Report will tell you the reasoning behind the difficulty score. So if a keyword has a difficulty score of 60%, the SERP will say “Moderately Competitive: Search results require high authority domains with well-targeted pages OR lower authority sites with powerful individual pages to achieve top results.” Meaning: if you are a smaller business, you can rank for this keyword by using “powerful individual pages”, and if you are hiring the right person to write your content, and they are creating powerful, unique content, you have a higher chance of moving up in the rankings! SCORE!

EX. You own a small, local moving company. You most likely will not rank high for “moving company”, so try searching for “relocation” in Google Adwords. The keyword “relocation” has an average of 14,800 monthly searches and a Medium competition status in Google Adwords. When you go to MozPro, “relocation” has a Keyword Difficulty of 58%, which is lower than 60% so you are in the clear, as a lower authority site, and are able to use this keyword in your content in order to improve your rankings. YOUR WELCOME!

Finding the proper keywords for your specific brand and target audience will take some playing around in SEO tools with, but it WILL benefit your business in the end. After all, who wants to pay for Organic Search Content creation that does not work?!