In SEO and digital PR, there is a lot of discussion surrounding how and why brands need to close backlink gaps in order to rank high and be competitive in the SERPs.

But what about tackling competitive SEO from the opposite direction by creating link gaps?

In this post, I’ll share a framework that we use at JBH to help us create hyper-niche and relevant digital PR campaigns that will earn links on sites where our clients’ competitors aren’t found, and highlight the strategic importance of creating these gaps for SEO success.

What are link gaps, and how do we find them?

On a very basic level, a link gap is the difference between the sites linking to multiple competitors, but not to you.

It’s really easy to discover these sites by performing a link gap analysis (using a tool like Moz’s Link Intersect Tool), comparing the backlinks you have to those of your competitors. At the end of your analysis, you’re left with a list of websites you should try and earn a link from — this is called closing the link gap, and is common in most SEO strategies.

Closing link gaps makes a lot of sense. For example, if someone is linking to a site in a particular industry or vertical, it’s likely they’d be keen to link to a similar site. And if your competition is ranking well, then you’d expect those links to be contributing to that.

But if we flip that theory around and start to think about creating backlink gaps as opposed to closing them, then we become more proactive in our approach to link building, as opposed to simply reacting to the competition.

Create link gaps in competitive industries with an audience-first mindset

If you’re trying to earn or build links for brands in very competitive industries, it can be tempting to follow the competition and simply copy their link strategy to prove you’ve done everything you can. I’d like to share a different approach, and it involves thinking audience-first rather than backlink first.

The idea behind this technique is to generate links from sites that are:

1. Topically relevant to the industry your brand or client operates in

2. High quality and non-spammy

3. Not feature a link to any of your competitors

For this technique to work, we still need to have a good understanding of the competitor link landscape. By using Link Intersect, we can see where our competitors are focusing their link building efforts. We’ll red flag that information in our strategy and do something completely different.

For most industries and sectors, there will be “business as usual” topics that their PR teams might use to generate coverage and links.

• A personal finance brand might talk about how to get the best exchange rate on travel money

• An alcoholic beverage brand might share some recipes for summer cocktails to enjoy in the garden

• A car insurance brand might warn drivers not to wear flip flops when driving in a heatwave

These are all interesting and relevant subjects, but they are not going to achieve the unique links for the purposes of creating a link gap between you and your competitors.

Case Study: How we identified niche link targets for a well-established brand in a competitive vertical

For an established brand in the UK holiday industry, the objective was to earn links from entirely new referring domains, as well as create a link gap between them and their competitors.

The initial link gap analysis highlighted that there wasn’t much difference between the key players. As they were all well established brands in the vertical, all brands had earned backlinks from the usual and expected outlets, so we spotted a really great opportunity to develop a new link gap.

Identify new audiences by asking the most important questions

As mentioned above, instead of thinking “link first”, we take a step back and think “audience first”. We have to step into the shoes of our audience, and to do that, we create a checklist of questions to help frame our thinking.

For the UK holidays brand we wanted to know:

• What drives them? What are the passions and interests of our intended audience?

• What makes them tick and click? What actions do the audience take before and after using your product or service?

• What do they care deeply about? Their close family and friends? Finances? Pets?

• Problem solving? What do the audience need and what problems does your product or service solve?

Once we answer all of the audience questions, we have a solid starting point to pinpoint those niche audiences.

Using a mind mapping tool like MindNode, we can then get to work on expanding out those primary and secondary audiences:

These audiences will look different for every industry, but it’s easy to see how each of the audiences we identified might be interested in booking a holiday in the UK.

Let’s take “work from anywhere” as the primary audience to explore first. If you’re a freelancer who works primarily online, it’s likely that you’ll be able to work from anywhere with a decent internet connection. So, taking a UK holiday whilst working at the same time is an option and therefore relevant to the audience.

But who else can work from anywhere? Here, we can also identify four secondary audiences who could also be targeting our content:

The results of this audience-led approach to digital PR

Following this approach, over a third (35%) of the links that JBH secured were from completely new referring domains, and (at the time of writing) none of the brand’s competitors had links from those domains either, proving that an audience-led approach to digital PR can put space between you and your competitors.

How to find suitable sites and link targets

Now that we’re happy that the “work from anywhere” audience group would be suitable to target, our next steps are to identify the sites we want to target for links.

It makes sense to do this before we start to create any content, as we’ll assess:

• Quantity of sites: Are there enough sites to target?

• Quality of sites: Are the sites high enough quality?

• Topics of interest: What conversations are trending and can we add value to them?

• Targeted by the competition? Have our competitors got links on here yet?

• Will they share our content? Is it likely they will take content on an editorial basis? We don’t want to target any sites who require payment for coverage

Searching manually with Google

This technique is old but gold, and it’s probably the most effective way to find new sites to pitch your content to. We search for terms relevant to the audience we’re looking to target, and make a list of the sites that pop up, noting down journalist/author names, the domain authority of the sites, any similar content, and how likely they are to take content from us.

Top tip! Drill down your settings in Google’s tools. Try changing the country or changing the “last published” date to see more sites in the search engine results.

Discovering similar sites

Download a free tool called SimilarSites from Chrome’s web store. When you find a site that looks perfect for the niche audience you’re targeting, click on the extension to be shown a list of sites that might also work. Simply add them to your outreach list to use later.

There are plenty of other prospecting techniques you can use to find link targets, but you should now have a list of relevant publications that may be interested in your content – it’s time to start thinking about the type of content you could share!

Content ideas for niche link targets

How boundaries can help

It’s worth mentioning at this point that having boundaries for brainstorms can actually make this part of the process much easier.

In 2006, a team of architects wanted to study how having a fence around a playground would impact children and how they play. They observed children playing on a playground surrounded by a fence and compared it to children playing on a playground without the physical boundary of a fence. They found a striking difference in how the children interacted with the space.

On the playground without the fence (1), the children gathered around the teacher and were reluctant to explore the space. On the playground with the fence (2), the children explored the entire playground, feeling more free.

The study concluded that the boundary (in this case a fence) made the children feel more at ease to explore and play.

We can draw parallels with this. By providing some boundaries and a specific problem to solve, we can actually improve the creative process.

“The three Rs”: A framework to develop content ideas for niche link targets

The content ideas we produce need to resonate with our niche audience, so we need to get immersed in the topics they care about. And there are some unique and perhaps unexpected ways we can do this. Before you start thinking about creative content, ensure you follow the Three R’s:

Research

• Reddit – join subreddits related to the audience you want to target – Reddit is the front page of the internet and it’s likely you’ll find your audience there

• Quora – discover the questions your audience want to know the answers to

• Facebook Groups – joining very audience specific groups lets you see the genuine conversations that the community are having

• Buzzsumo – discover the topics that are trending and getting tons of engagement and clicks on social media

React

• Google Alerts – Set up alerts for keywords and phrases surrounding your identified topics ie: work from anywhere

• Google Trends – Check to see if any topics are experiencing a spike in searches as this can highlight the popularity of trends

• #JournoRequest / Response Source / HARO – Keep an eye on the type of requests that journalists are making to see if they match the style of content you’re planning

Relevance

• Audience — would my client or brand’s audience be interested in this content?

• Authority — is my client or brand an authority on the subject? Could they be interviewed about it?

• Keywords — does it contain keywords that we want to rank for, and do we have a page on the site that makes sense to link to?

• Newsworthiness — will journalists care about what we are saying? What are we adding to the conversation?

A strategic approach can give you the competitive edge, but it’s all about the set up

It is so easy to get carried away chasing the tail of your competition, but with this approach, you’ll begin to create content designed specifically for niche audiences that creates beneficial gaps between you and your competitors. Remember, there’s no better link to build than one that the competition doesn’t have yet.

Introduction

Expanding your business internationally is an excellent way to grow and scale your company. However, deciding to enter foreign markets involves making several decisions and taking actions that establish your organic presence.

This article will guide you through 15 SEO steps to follow that will allow you to conquer new markets successfully.

Table of contents:

1. Deciding to go international
2. Domain best practices
3. Content transcreation
4. Technical considerations
5. Off-page best practices
6. Bonus: Different search engines

Deciding to go international

Globalization has made it easy for almost any business to expand its presence internationally. If you detect a great opportunity or a fair amount of traffic to your site from a specific country, it could be worthwhile to target this market more thoroughly.

Nevertheless, entering a new market without solid preliminary research can lead to wasted time and resources. To prevent entering a market blindly, in-depth keyword research and competitor analysis can be used to help clarify market potential.

1) Keyword research

Local keyword research will allow you to gather data regarding the search volume and traffic potential of search terms related to your product/service in the local language of new markets. Moz Keyword Explorer is an excellent tool for this purpose. 

Other than search volume, the Difficulty is a key metric to consider, as it defines how competitive your keywords are in the different languages and markets.

Note: Be aware of the fact that one-to-one translation of keywords doesn’t always work. Words can have different meanings in different languages, and, in some markets, multiple words and phrases can be used as synonyms for the same product or service.

It is highly recommended to have native speakers of the languages in the area you’re targeting lead your keyword research, as they’ll understand the particular market and culture well. If you don’t have the resources internally to conduct the local research, you could outsource this task to a local expert.

Additionally, using Google Trends to study local keyword trends can be a great way to highlight areas with the highest interest in your product or service. The analysis of the interest over time and interest by region is a quick and good way to identify trends and potential in a market.

2) Competitor analysis

Based on the relevant keywords and queries highlighted in the keyword research phase, you can define organic competitors in your new market(s).

Organic competitors are competitors on the Search Engines Result Pages (SERPs) ranking for your target search terms. Some SEO tools, like Moz, will give you an overview of the local SERPs for your queries. Based on the relevant keywords and queries highlighted in the keyword research phase, you can define organic competitors in each market(s). 

Organic competitors might overlap internationally, but might also significantly differ from market to market. It’s worth checking in which countries your main organic competitors are present, in which languages their website(s) is/are available, and how qualitative their content is, as it will help you determine which markets are worth expanding into yourself.

The most attractive markets are obviously the ones with a high search potential and relatively low competition. It is up to you to decide to enter more competitive markets, considering your particular and available resources.

Domain best practices

Much like in your home market, the choice of your domain name and structure in new, international spaces can impact your local rankings, as well as the perception of your brand.

3) Website configuration

Going international necessitates adapting to a different country, language, or both:

• A multi-regionalwebsite is a website targeting several countries (airbnb.com).

• A multilingual website is a website targeting several languages (tiqets.com).

• A global website is a website targeting an international audience (theculturetrip.com).

The number of different website versions necessary depends on the audience you want to target.

• Country targeting means that you want to target one or multiple specific countries. In this case, one website version for each country is needed.

• Language targeting means that you target an audience speaking the same language. In this respect, one website version in this particular language is required.

A global website approach can be effective if your audience is already international and has no need for customization (e.g. a marketing blog like the Moz Blog). Nevertheless, most people prefer to browse in their language, and it’s harder for a domain to rank in a specific market when it’s not localized.

4) Brand name vs. localized name

Your domain name can be either a name related to your brand/company or a localized name adapted to the local market.

Some companies choose to localize their domain name, as it allows them to include keywords that are relevant to the target market. This is, for instance, the case for the websites of the Auto1 Group, an automotive company, which adapts its name to each target market:

In general, using your brand/company name is recommended, as it allows you to consolidate brand authority and awareness among different markets. However, if your brand name has an ambivalent meaning or is challenging to pronounce in a certain language, it’s preferable to adapt your domain name to the local market.

5) URL structure preference

Geotargeting means serving the correct version of your website to users according to their location. In this context, the choice of the URL structure is crucial, as it will be an indication for both search engines and users.

URLs can be structured in three different ways to target international markets:

• ccTLD: country-code Top Level Domain (.fr; .de; .nl,…).

• gTLD: generic Top-Level Domain (.com; .org; .net,…) + local subdirectories (.com/fr; .org/de; .net/nl,…).

• Subdomain: local subdomain attached to the root domain (fr.domain.com; de.domain.org; nl.domain.net,…).

Note: Some websites use parameters (for instance: www.domain.com ?loc=fr) in order to display the content to users based on their current location. This technique is not recommended for geotargeting. In order to optimize ranking potential, each version should have its own URL.

There is no right or wrong setup, as each of these URL structures has its advantages and disadvantages. The choice of the structure has to be made by taking into account the markets you decide to penetrate, the niche you operate in, and your available resources.

The following elements also have to be considered:

• Depending on the CMS you’re using, the choice of the URL structure might be limited.

• Some countries have specific regulations regarding domain names. To be able to register some ccTLDs, a local residence or company headquartered in the country is necessary (for example, in Norway).

6) International targeting with Google Search Console

For URL structures using a gTLD, you can use Search Console’s International Targeting report to let Google know that your website targets visitors from a specific country. This feature will then be used as a local hint by Google. You can find this report under the “Legacy tools and reports” section in Google Search Console. As you can observe, domains using a ccTLD are geo-targeted by default.

Content transcreation

“Transcreation” is a portmanteau of the words “translation” and “creation”, and is the concept of adapting a text to a different language and culture. When entering a new market, it’s vital to adapt your website to local users to make it ultra-relevant.

7) Content translation

Creating brand new content is time-consuming. For this reason, when expanding to new markets, most companies choose to translate the content of their original website.

Just like in your home market, the quality of your content impacts your website rankings. Translating content without proper keyword research in the new language, as well as knowledge of your new users’ search intent can lead to poor, irrelevant content that is not adapted to local users. Spend some time expanding your content development processes to account for potential differences.

And remember: everything has to be translated on your page, not solely the body of the content itself. This means translating o-page elements such as image alt tags, URLs, meta titles and descriptions, and headers have to be localized as well. If several languages are detected by search engines, it can send a signal of poor quality and affect your rankings.

8) Adaptation to the new country

Cultural differences

Speaking the language of a country doesn’t mean talking to its people. Every country has its own slang and cultural differences in terms of taste, humor, and mentality.

These characteristics can differ enormously between countries. Hence the need to get the content creation managed by a person native (or at least familiar) with the country and its culture.

Country-specific editorial calendar

It’s important to keep track of the national and religious events and seasons in the different local markets. Each country has its own specificities, and your content and promotions should align with it.

Currency

The currency used on a website must ideally be the one of the targeted country. In the case of a global website, it’s a must to offer users the opportunity to switch currency with a currency selector. Most content management systems offer the possibility to install a plugin to manage this function efficiently.

Means of payment

Whenever possible, it’s good to adapt to users’ preferences and offer them different methods of payment. Some means of payment are popular and specific to some countries, such as IDeal in the Netherlands and Klarna in Sweden.

Use of special characters

In certain parts of the world, people:

• Use a non-Latin language (Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese,…).

• Use special characters (ß, ü, å, œ, ç, ø, ñ,…) in their language.

URLs must be written and served only using the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) character set. As such, URLs containing special characters need to be encoded into a valid ASCII format by browsers, in order to be adequately processed. Most browsers support non-ASCII characters and serve them unencoded to users. Nevertheless, when copy-pasting URLs in the browser, encoding is visible (see example below).

Therefore, the use of special characters in URLs makes them less “share-friendly.” Besides, some search engines have difficulty parsing and recognizing URLs with special characters effectively.

A workaround to this issue is to use phonetic transcriptions. For instance, If you target the Chinese market, you can use Pinyin (the romanization of standard Mandarin) in your URLs, instead of Chinese characters.

Whether you decide to transcribe your URLs or keep special characters is up to you. As always, the best method is to consider it from a user’s point of view, and what type of URLs they would prefer to see.

Local regulations

Local regulations have to be taken seriously and must be respected in order to avoid potential legal issues. For instance, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies whenever you track and analyze data from EU visitors, even if your company is located outside the EU.

Similar regulations apply in other regions. In Japan, they have the Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI), and California has the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

In the US, accessibility is a serious topic (see the Americans with Disabilities Act). To comply and avoid legal complaints, companies must stick to the internationally recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

If you’re not familiar, inform yourself about the different local regulations.

9) External links

As always, in order to enhance your content, it’s recommended to add outbound links to other relevant local websites.

Outbound links are a good, natural way to provide more insights to your readers and context to the search engines about the topic you are covering.

Search engines pay attention to the quality of the outbound links contained in your content. Therefore, it is important that your content only contains outbound links to authoritative local sources. Authoritative local sources are links to pages that are relevant in terms of quality (resources valuable for visitors, topic-relevant, trustworthy authors,…) as well as in terms of quantitative metrics (organic traffic, Domain Authority, …). Outbound links should be editorially and naturally placed into the content and point to up-to-date resources, ideally in the same local language.

Technical considerations

10) Hreflang implementation

In an international context, the hreflang tag helps search engines (like Google, Yandex, and Seznam) define which URL version of your site should be served to visitors from a specific area, or who speak a particular language.

Hreflang attributes are helpful to prevent indexation issues due to duplicate content, in the case where the same content is delivered in the same language to different geographical areas. They’re used as “hints” by search engines, which are free to ignore them.

Hreflang can be implemented in three different ways: Via the HTTP header, inside the <head> of a HTML document, or within a site XML sitemap.

11) HTML lang & the Content-language meta tag

While Google and Yandex only refer to the hreflang tag instructions, some other search engines (Baidu, Naver, and Bing) use different tags to identify localized content. HTML lang is an attribute that specifies the language used on a web page. The content-language meta tag is used to indicate the language and country for which the page content is intended for. Be aware of what’s needed in the search engine(s) of your new region. 

12) IP-based redirection

Location-based redirection is the concept of redirecting users to the correct local interface based on their IP location/browser language.

When IP-based redirection is automatic, it can prevent search engine bots from crawling your website. Most of the time, Google bots are crawling websites with US-based IP addresses. Whenever IP auto-redirection happens, spiders will be limited and only able to crawl a single version of your site, leaving other site variations undiscovered and therefore potentially not crawled and indexed.

Moreover, IP-based redirection can have a negative impact on user experience. Imagine you’re in Japan, and you want to read an article in French. You definitely don’t want to be forced to interact with the Japanese version of the domain.

An alternative to geolocation-based redirection is to use non-intrusive geo-based pop-ups/banners or manual location pickers to suggest that users be redirected to the local version of their choice.

13) Server location

In the past, your physical server location was used by Google as a local signal, but that’s no longer the case.

For geotargeting we use mostly the ccTLD or search console setting, so place the server where it works best for you.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) July 7, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Nevertheless, server location impacts site speed, as data must travel via a network of physical cables. The closer a website server’s location is to its visitors, the faster it will load.

If your site’s server is located in a different region than your visitors, you can use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN is a network of servers geographically spread around the world that host and cache websites’ static assets (image files, JS, CSS).

The benefit of hosting some of your resources on a CDN is to reduce the page load time, as these resources will be served locally near the users’ locations. In addition, some CDNs add an extra layer of protection to your website by providing firewall security features.

Off-page recommendations

Off-page SEO refers to all the activities that you perform outside of your domain in order to increase the user- and search engine perception of its relevance, popularity, trustworthiness, and authority. An off-page SEO strategy is crucial in order to succeed in an international environment.

14) Country-specific link building

Links remain one of the main ranking factors. When entering a new market, links facilitate your site’s discovery by both search engines and users. At the very beginning, SEO should work together with other departments such as PR to build links to their homepage and create brand awareness.

When your site is technically well-grounded and serves users with qualitative content, it’s time to start acquiring relevant, local backlinks. By receiving backlinks from authoritative sources in each targeted country, you’ll be able to compete and impose your local presence.

Establish a country-specific outreach strategy for each market, as each one will be different. Some tactics that work well in one country might not be so efficient in another one. It’s crucial to always adjust your approach to the customs of the individual market in order to build valuable partnerships.

The following practices are recommended in the international backlink acquisition process:

15) Local citations and NAP consistency

Local citations are any mention of your business information online. Local citations matter if you are implemented in several countries and have physical addresses, as they allow you to strengthen your local presence. Your website NAP can be found on your website as well as on Google My Business and other social media pages and local directories.

If search engines discover different addresses, they, as well as your users, might be confused. Make sure to remain consistent with your Name, Address, Phone (NAP) in your local citations in the different countries that you are present in. Moz has a free tool to verify the consistency of your citations in the US, UK, and Canada.

Bonus: Different search engines

When talking about search engine optimization, we mostly consider Google, as it’s the most used search engine in the world. Nevertheless, in some markets, Google is not the largest search engine.

For instance, in China, most people use Baidu, and in Russia, people use Yandex. Other popular engines are Naver in South Korea, Seznam in the Czech Republic, and Yahoo in Japan.

Whenever you intend to enter these markets, you have to take time to research and be aware of some specificities related to these search engines. For example, below are some key international SEO elements to take into consideration for Baidu.

Conclusion

Deciding to expand your business or website into a new market is not something that should be hastily attempted. From the SEO side, it requires a lot of thought, careful consideration, and time to do it right.

When entering a new market, your international SEO strategy should consist of:

• Studying market potential.

• Choosing the right domain and URL structure.

• Geotargeting and adapting content to local users.

• Developing authority and traffic locally.

From choosing the right structure and geotargeting, to writing compelling content adapted to your local audience, an effective plan has to be designed that takes into account your company resources and market potential for effective and successful expansion.

What does it take to advance your career?

Knowledge? Absolutely. Skills? Most definitely. But there is another element, one so important that without it, knowledge and skills lie dormant: Action.

In my experience, the ability to take action sits firmly on the foundation of a strong mindset. Consider these scenarios:

• Have you wanted to answer a question at work that you were sure you knew the answer to, but doubt crept in and you remained silent?

• Perhaps you were in a team meeting and wanted to put yourself forward for an exciting opportunity, but instead shrunk away?

• Or maybe you were part of a new, exciting project, however, felt unworthy of being there. So instead of actively contributing, you sat frozen with imposter syndrome.

You are not alone. Last year, I spoke to many people within the SEO industry about their biggest struggles. They talked about the difficulty in progressing their career, improving their salary, saying yes to opportunities, or even speaking up in meetings. As we peeled away the layers to the real problem, the issues ran deep. Lack of confidence, imposter syndrome, and a less than empowering self-image or lack of self-esteem.

Organizations allocate vast amounts of resources to create environments that encourage development and a sense of belonging. And in the ever-changing landscape of the SEO industry, continuous learning is key. There is a wealth of available knowledge to tap into, all aimed at improving skills, be it analytical, technical, content, etc. All of these are hugely important. I’ve been involved in these educational initiatives myself, and know how passionate all those involved are about helping colleagues grow, thrive, and feel fulfilled in their careers. 

But the impact of these are not effective if employees have a limited sense of self, if confidence to speak out is lacking, or if self-belief is elusive. Only 4% of the respondents from the 2021 State of the Workplace survey said they feel fully confident at work. Without tackling these confidence issues, can anyone really reach their full potential?

My personal journey to self-belief

For many years, I, too, was lost in this maze of learning, with little belief that I could truly embrace opportunities. As a student, I self-sabotaged myself after being dubbed a “bad student” and failed most of my exams. But by 33, thanks to the help and support of great friends and lecturers, I graduated with a first-class degree as a mother of two. At 40, I was a single mum, afraid to speak publicly, but thanks to a supportive manager, by my 50s I was speaking at BrightonSEO in front of hundreds. 

Yet, I knew I was capable of more. I wanted to teach others the lessons and tools that had helped me, so, I took the bold step of hiring a coach. He encouraged me to build my mindset, self-belief, and high-performance habits.

And it worked. Now at 54, I’ve started my own coaching business, and have launched my own course, Reflect, Recharge, Relive. I also co-host The SEO Mindset Podcast with Sarah McDowell, and we are building a course based on the podcast to help people in the industry optimize their SEO careers. I run workshops to help teenagers with their confidence and self-belief, and am writing a book (aren’t we all!).

But most importantly, I have the self-belief that I can do anything I set my mind to.

Below, I’ll share the process I went through that took me from self-doubt to empowerment. I will also share some actionable tips to help change your mind about what you can achieve.

Understand your algorithm

A big part of the SEO world is understanding search engine algorithms. Each update is followed by a flurry of activity to find out what has changed. Why the updates? To serve the user better, add value, give them a better experience, and provide the desired result easier and quicker.

But what about your own inner algorithm? Do you understand it? Know what you do in certain contexts, such as when collaborating with others, or handling difficult situations. How often do you test and assess your behavior with the aim to update those behaviors, thus updating your algorithm to serve your career better?

Actionable tip:

Get to know yourself better than anyone by reflecting and journaling. Give yourself time, even 15 minutes a day, in a quiet place with no distractions to ask yourself questions and write down your thoughts and feelings. With questions come answers, and with answers comes clarity. Get clear about what will give you a better career development experience:

1. Reflect on what is important to you, on what you want to achieve, and what is holding you back. Is it presenting or writing more? Do you want to work with people more, or is your energy better spent working on your own?

2. Reflect on how you handle situations and what habits are not serving you. Be honest with yourself, and where you can be better. What happens when things don’t go your way? Are you able to empathize with others?

Build empowering beliefs

Tony Robbins has a simple, but effective, success model showing the relationship between beliefs, potential, actions and results. Your beliefs determine how much of your potential you tap into. This potential, in turn, determines the actions you take, and of course these actions determine your results. The cycle continues as these results further shape your beliefs.

At 18, I believed I was a “bad student”. I certainly didn’t use all my potential because I didn’t see the point, and therefore didn’t study well. My results were awful, which made sense, because I was a “bad student” — a label that was someone else’s opinion of me, that I chose to accept.

In my 30s, however, I worked on crushing this belief. I was a hard worker. I was capable. I was studious. I was a successful student. Repeating all these new beliefs meant I tapped into more of my potential, studied harder, and was rewarded with the highest grade possible. The cycle continued, and my beliefs grew stronger.

If you are looking to improve your career, but are struggling, or there is a challenge you cannot overcome, there may be a limiting belief that is blocking you. These limiting beliefs are often embedded in your brain’s circuitry from earlier years. The great thing is that you can reprogram your mind, and you can begin by thinking.

There has been much research conducted in this area, and the expert that has helped me the most is Dr Joe Dispenza who speaks a lot on reprogramming the subconscious mind.

Actionable tip

Start with the baseline that human potential is unlimited. Look at your role models and what they have accomplished.. You have the potential to do great things, too, but you have to believe:

1. Notice what thoughts are holding you back. What are you saying to yourself? For me, it was thoughts such as, “I am not good enough”, “Who am I to coach anyone”, or “I am not an expert”.

2. Ask yourself what evidence you have to back up these thoughts. Often, there is none.

3. Craft out more empowering thoughts that help you achieve your career goals. Repeat these to yourself daily. I say them to myself during my meditation practice in the morning.

4. Imagine yourself tackling your challenges. See yourself facing them, going through the work, learning the skill, stepping up to the opportunity, and allow yourself to feel how it would feel.

This sequence of thinking the process through, saying the empowering words, seeing yourself live through it, and feeling how it feels, is so important, as it begins the process of rewiring your mind.

Think of yourself as an entrepreneur

Imagine you were an entrepreneur starting a business. You would strategize and plan your vision, what needs to go into your mission statement, your goals for the next 3, 6, 12 months.

Often, when we’re employed, these goals are the business’s goals, which we mold ourselves to. Nothing wrong in that, as these have to be met.

However, alongside that, have you taken the time to strategize the goals for your own life? By thinking about yourself in this way, you are taking ownership, and are no longer the victim of someone else’s goals for you. When you take ownership, the power is with you to choose your path, to make choices in line with where you are heading, and with this comes fulfillment and confidence.

Actionable tip

Take time out, at least once a year, to take stock. What is going well in your career, and what could be better? What do you want to achieve in the next year and what skills will you need to learn?

• Find the resources you need to learn these skills, be it a course/book/person. Build your curriculum. Talk to your manager – there may be some overlap between your goals and the company goals, so you can link the learning plan together.

• Create a timetable – when are you going to learn these skills? Set small milestones.

• Be consistent. Do something, no matter how small, but do it daily. These small accomplishments each day add up.

• Find a coach/mentor/accountability partner and arrange to go through your progress at least once a month.

Tie your self-esteem to being a learner

Often, our self-esteem is based on other people’s opinions, like our manager’s assessment of how well we do at work. But their opinions are external factors out of our control, and when we base our self-esteem on them, that makes us vulnerable to harm when things turn negative.

But what if there was a way of linking self-esteem to something within our control, something that we could do every day, like learning?.

Actionable tip

Decide what you want to learn. This could be tied to your career development learning, or maybe a hobby or personal endeavor.

Every day, do something towards this learning goal, be it reading, writing, doing an online class, etc. At the end of the day, preferably in your journal, ask yourself: “What did I learn today?” and write down the answer.

You have now created a loop for yourself where every day you know you are getting better in some way, at something. Every day you are re-enforcing your growth – and by writing the progress in your journal, it becomes a record of how far you have come.

Take action, and venture out of your comfort zone

All this thinking, learning, reflecting, and journaling is hugely valuable. However, the aim of it all is that you take action – that is what will progress your career.

Now is the time to do something, preferably something you haven’t done before. Give a talk, take the lead, present some findings. Will it take you out of your comfort zone? Absolutely! That’s the idea.

Actionable tip

Rename the comfort zone. We often talk about “stepping out of our comfort zone”, but what is this other zone called that we step into? Does it even have a name? Most of us feel like this unnamed space is scary. A place many avoid, where we have to push ourselves to go, desperately wanting to return to “comfort”.

What if, instead, “comfort zone” became “rest zone”, and outside the rest zone became something like “learning zone”, “growth zone”, or “progression zone”?

Notice how none of these new names allow for perfectionism. Let perfection go – it really is a way of keeping you stuck, silent, not saying what you need to say and not doing what you need to do for fear of not being perfect. Instead, embrace “good-enoughism”, because that is what will advance your growth in this newly named zone.

And remember, version 1 is better than version 0.

Look after your energy and recharge…daily

We charge our phones daily so that they work for us when we need them. But how often do we recharge ourselves? Our minds are the vehicles that will take us forward, but they will only be able to do so if we look after them.

Actionable tips

Listen to your inner world, or the conversations that you have with yourself. Catch yourself being negative in your thought processes. This dialogue will limit what you believe you can do and be.

Change these to words of positivity and affirmation of your limitless potential, words that will boost your belief and attitude. Start your day with these words, affirming who you want to be and what you want to believe.

I am confident.

I am strong.

I am healthy.

I am knowledgeable.

I am creative.

I am solution-focused.

I am a learner.

I am getting better every day.

Now look at your outer world. Who are the people discouraging you, telling you it isn’t possible? Minimize contact with them as much as possible and instead surround yourself with people who help you feel charged and who will help you grow.

Finally, incorporate self-care into your schedule, especially in the form of movement. Yoga, sports, even just walking all are great for the purpose of exercise, but also help still the mind and relieve stress.

Be optimistic

Look, I’m not saying there are no hardships in life, and working on your career will indeed have challenges. But if you have the view that it is all bad, people are bad, opportunities are non-existent, failure is certain, and nothing ever works, then why would you try anything new?

The truth is that we often see the worst in people and believe in the worst possible scenario. This is a distorted view, one that doesn’t serve us or help us advance. And in my experience, most people are good most of the time. Colleagues and managers want us to do well in the same way we want others to succeed.

Cheer others on but grab the opportunities, too, with optimism. If nothing else, every opportunity has the ability to teach us something that will help us grow.

Actionable tip

Next time you’re in one of these situations, think of all the possible outcomes and pick the best one. Perhaps it is an opportunity to work on a new project, or apply for a promotion. Let yourself feel excited about the possibilities and what you could achieve.

Think of not what you’ll lose, but all that you will gain. What skills will you learn or improve on?

Finally, offer to help others. Reach out, build relationships, or teach others a skill. Build goodwill and your reputation for being optimistic and generous.

Conclusion

There is no one thing that leads to an optimized career, because success means different things to different people. Keep an open mind, follow the action points, try doing different things, and be consistent.

Consistency is key, even if it is a small step each day. Commit to building the habits that will move you towards your new you. These new habits will weave themselves into a new way of life that will reap results for you.

By taking these steps, your self-awareness and self-esteem will grow, and your beliefs will be more empowering. You’ll feel charged and optimistic, and your confidence will lead you to take action that previously you may have avoided.

More than that, you will feel in control, and will begin to build a better you, who will then show up in every area of your life — your newly optimized life.

Which local pack element is hiding in plain sight, has no industry name despite being present in at least 33% of SERPs, and has curious behaviors which, up until now, have been little explored?

It’s the thing I’ll call “local pack headers”, after informally polling my peers and confirming that the local SEO industry has never really dubbed this bold, ubiquitous feature which headlines local packs:

Right now, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, yeah, of course I know what those are, but I’ve never really paid much attention to them.”

At least, that’s what I thought when my honored colleague, Dr. Peter J Meyers, started looking at these with me recently. So, we decided to pull some data and see what we could learn from it about what Google is doing with these big headers, and we found some surprises and a few takeaways I’ll share with you today. After all, the better we know the local SERPs, the smarter we can be at strategizing for our clients.

Methodology

Using MozCast, we pulled in data for 3,392 queries with local packs (derived from 10,000 total queries) to discover original data on the incidence and behaviors of local pack headers, comparing query language to SERPs in a spreadsheet. We combined this with manual lookups of 50 search terms to further observe Google’s handling of this element. Your results may differ based on location, language, and device.

What we learned about local pack headers

Here’s a simple rundown of our three overall findings.

1. The diversity of unique local pack headers is enormous

Out of our 3,392 searches, nearly 2,000 of the headers were unique. As local SEOs, we are so attuned to thinking in terms of standard Google Business Profile categories, it feels a bit surprising that a search term like “50th birthday party ideas” generates a unique local header that isn’t something like “party store” or “amusement center”. You can see familiar categories like these right there in the pack shown above, but the local pack header very often captures the search language rather than the associated category. Nearly two-thirds of the time in our data set, what Google showed as a header was totally unique and not like any other result term within our experiment.

2. The semantic relationships underpinning local pack headers are wild and wide

Only 40% of the time, Google exactly matched the local pack header to our query language. I included in this segment queries and results that were identical except for some small difference in punctuation like “Arbys” vs. “Arby’s”. 60% of the time, they instead mapped our query to a different header they believed to be relevant. In other words, six times out of ten, our search for something like “baby stroller” didn’t result in a mirrored header, but rather brought up a header like “department store”.

What was especially mysterious to me while doing this research was the seemingly random way in which these semantic relationships are operating, and I’ll share just a few illustrative examples.

Why, for instance, does my search for “adopt dog” generate a local pack header for “animal rescue services”:

But my search for “adopt bunny”, which is something you can also typically do at an animal rescue, receives an exact match header:

Why does my search for “mop” generate an exact match header:

But, as if it exists in some utterly different commercial reality than a mop, my search for “broom” earns the “in-store availability” header:

Similarly, why does Google highlight the “in-store availability” of a desk:

But for a couch, you’re on your own calling up “furniture stores” to see what’s in-stock:

Why do my searches for “karate”, “wing chun”, “aikido”, and “jiu jitsu” all bring up the “martial arts schools” heading:

But my “tai chi” query is met with an exact match heading, instead:

Things get really wild once we start searching for something to eat. Google believes that my search for “jasmine tea” will be best satisfied at a grocery store:

But if I want pickles, I deserve a header of my own:

Meanwhile, if I look for “tacos”, Google maps that to a header for “Mexican restaurants”, and if want “pho” Google maps that to a header for “Vietnamese restaurants”, but Google doesn’t seem to believe my search for “spaghetti” is closely tied to “Italian restaurants” and, instead, shows me an exact match header, followed by a pack full of…Italian restaurants:

Why do “pants” exist in “clothing stores” but “t-shirts” exist on their own? Why do “tomato seeds” bring up “garden centers”, but “petunias” have a pack of their own? Why does the search engine know the “in-store availability” of “vinegar” but not of “BBQ sauce”, which gets its own heading?

Suffice it to say, Google’s handling of all this is weird, and suggestive of an underlying semantic logic that often defies description. I’d like to offer a simple explanation, like “these headings stem from primary GBP categories”, but any effort on my part to prove something like that has failed. The language is often quite distinct from category language, and for now, the best I can offer to do is break the local pack headers down into rough types…

3. There are at least five types of local pack headers

These are the five basic buckets into which most headers fit:

• Branded — searches for something like “Chuck E. Cheese near me” receive a “Chuck E. Cheese” heading on the packs.

• Commercial container terms — many searches for specific products and services get headlined by phrases like “grocery store”, “department store”, “chiropractor”, “legal firm”, “plumber”, etc. Whether you’re searching for “vacuum cleaner” or “back pain”, Google will frequently associate your search language with some overall container business type. Sometimes, these terms will exactly match regular Google Business Profile categories, but many times they don’t. For example, my search for “vacuum cleaner” generates a pack that is labeled “vacuum cleaner” rather than the standard category “vacuum cleaner store”.

• Commercial exact match terms — as we saw above, Google will often exactly match the header to product searches like “pickles” or “spaghetti” and they will do this to service inquiries, too, like “tax preparation services”.

• Informational — as in our “50th birthday party ideas” example, Google can take an informational query like this and map it to local results, whether they are commercial like a party store, or civic, like a local park. Informational queries can either result in exact match headings or in headings that don’t match but have some presumed implicit relationship.

• Actionable — the “in store availability” label reads like a local justification along the lines of “sold here” and “in stock”, but this most actionable CTA isn’t obviously linked to the presence of justifications. For example, here is a search I do from time to time for “accent chairs corte madera” to keep an eye on what Google is up to:

As you can see in the above screenshot, all three of the entries in the local pack feature the “sold here” justification, but the local pack header is in the “commercial exact match” bucket rather than earning the “in-store availability” headline. Even the presence of “in-stock” justifications does not necessarily prompt the “in-store availability” header to appear:

What can you do with what we’ve learned?

Do you ever get the giggles when reading headlines raving about how smart AI and machine learning have made search because you’ve seen so much proof of the opposite? Do you ever give a sigh when a developer claims a machine is now as intelligent as a human (and secretly wish these folks would set the bar higher to like … a dolphin or something, given abundant evidence of the evolution we humans need to go through before we can be pronounced intelligently self-sustaining)? With that in mind, let’s take a second look at 50th birthday party ideas:

I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure whether Dr. Pete or I would want to spend our august semi-centennial celebrations at Cucu’s PlayHouse or the other entries here which reviewers are praising as great fun for little kids. Maybe? I’ll have to ask Pete, but in the meantime, this local pack presents dubious evidence of Google’s smartness in associating a 50th birthday parties with:

• Review justifications talking about “kiddos” and “sons”

• The primary category of “language school” (albeit, that would make a fun party for philologists)

Google is, I suppose, trying hard with “party store” and “amusement center”, but the overall relevance leaves something to be desired here.

The truth is, search technology is barely out of kindergarten, and the local businesses you market are going to have to help it learn its ABCs. That’s why studying an overlooked element like the local pack headers could be a competitive advantage for you. Try this checklist:

1. Run your core searches and see which local pack headers are coming up for each term.

2. Have you optimized for those header terms on relevant pages of your website? No? Do it.

3. Are you writing review requests in such a way that they generate review justifications that contain those header terms?

4. Are you listing products on your site and Google Business Profile and via Pointy so that Google knows that a header they are using matches something you’ve got? Not yet? Better do that, too.

5. Do you have any gaps in your GBP categories that could be filled with missing categories you are seeing reflected in the packs associated with certain headers? Add them!

While I can’t prove that fields and features like categories and justifications are part of the underlying semantic mapping going on that is informing how Google is filling up packs under these vastly diverse headers, what I do know is that literally anything you can utilize to signal to Google, “hey, I’m relevant” is worth considering. Let Google know you’ve got the pickles, and the accent chairs, and the solution to back pain, every possible way you can.

Today, I’ll leave you with a sentiment I heard expressed by multiple speakers at MozCon 2022 (video bundles coming soon!) that has stuck with me. Presenters urged attendees to ask the question,

“What is search for me today?”

The barrage of SERP features is so bewildering, my colleagues at Near Media are comparing Google’s results to Las Vegas, and you have to be intentional about making time to actually sit down and study all the shiny, but sometimes not too bright, objects that are representing the businesses you market to the public. Things constantly change in this interface, and you’ve got to look at what search is for you (and your customers) today, and then look again tomorrow to see if some big-pixeled promotional element like a local pack header is actually hiding right under your nose.

In today’s case, we’ve got a feature that’s as large as the sign on a mall or the label on a package that is signaling to us how Google is struggling, succeeding, and failing to match intent to their assets. And since those assets also happen to be yours, your awareness and experimentation belong here. If you decide to do your own study of the local pack headers and end up detecting new patterns that we haven’t covered here today, @ me on Twitter and we’ll keep learning local together!

Storytelling with data is a crucial part of any content marketer’s toolbox. Whether you are using data visualization to illustrate a point you’re trying to make, or you want to showcase data from an analysis your team has done, proper data design is key to creating effective visuals that everyone is happy with. Charts and infographics can be pretty, but if they aren’t also properly breaking down data in a way that makes an impact on the audience, they are likely not worth the time and effort.

Below, we discuss how storytelling ties into data visualization, and what tools can help you bring more data into your content. We also recently updated our Learn Center article about storytelling with data, to highlight how data transforms our content and legitimizes the points we’re trying to make, no matter the topic. Be sure to check it out for even more insights!

How does storytelling tie into data visualization?

Visualization is the act of taking data and breaking it down in a visual way that helps the audience understand at a glance what the data is telling us. This could be something like taking population data from a town and creating a pie chart that shows the age ranges of all residents or looking at a bar chart to see that the number of apps an average user downloads on their smartphone has slowly increased over time. Then, after this data is introduced, we use storytelling through content to further explain what the data is telling us.

For instance, if we know that the average user downloads two more apps to their phone then they did five years prior, we can deduce that users are likely using their phones more. This can help us introduce our main point or solution, such as an app cleaning utility to help users remove apps they no longer use, or behavioral modifications for users that want to be on their phone less.

The best tools for data visualization

If you’re looking to create your unique data visuals, which is recommended so you don’t use someone else’s data without their permission, there are several tools you can use to gather data that will influence the main points in your content narrative. These free and paid tools range from the following:

• providing the data for you in a chart format

• giving you raw data to build into graphics

• allowing you to import your raw data so you can build the visuals you need to properly summarize the data points

Creating your own data visualizations can help you create imagery that illustrates your point, influences users to take action, or helps you explain your points in a visual way. Whether you need data trends over time or an analysis of your data to determine next steps, these tools can help.

Google Trends

Most SEOs are aware of Google Trends, but almost any industry can use it to get a quick pulse on what is trending in their specific field of products or services. For instance, if you are an e-commerce, you can check out the Google shopping trends to see what products are being searched for most recently. The page also points out large spikes for specific product terms for e-commerce, such as “y2k aesthetic.”

Additionally, Google Trends also shows daily overall trending search topics in specific countries. This is really useful if you’re looking for data that applies to a specific country or the pulse of a certain area overall, such as music or current events.

The main section of Google Trends allows you to compare multiple topics as once to see how user interest has ebbed and flowed over time.

This data can be an effective way to showcase how specific audiences have gained or lost interest in a topic over a set period of time.

Google Charts

If you already have data that you need to plot into charts, Google Charts under Google’s development tools is a great way to do that. It allows you to import data which you can create visualizations from and then place on your website.

It’s free and completely customizable. It also has a gallery you can browse for examples of available charts, which can help you decide which is best for your data.

This tool may require more developer knowledge since you’ll have to HTML5 and other code to pull in the data.

Additionally, Google Data Studio is similar to Google Charts, where you can import several different data sources to create graphics and live charts based on API-connected data. However, it is focused more on providing an internal data dashboard rather than public-facing charts for content pages.

Moz

If you’re looking to share keyword research or search data over time, consider using Moz. Moz Pro allows you to track your campaign data over time (as well as research competitors), and the suite of free tools lets you view data on specific keywords or links.

This data analysis can be used in marketing pieces to describe trends in search over time, or you can use this type of data in your internal stakeholder content, such as when you want to illustrate the success of your organic content campaigns or how the number of links to specific pages has increased over time since you started updating old posts.

Tableau

Tableau is arguably the most well-known data visualization tool available. It has paid and free versions. The free version, Tableau Public, requires a software download, but then lets you create data visualizations for free (with some limitations that are lifted in the paid version).

To see some of the data visualizations that were created using Tableau, they have their free 3D VizGallery that lets you walk through a 3D “art gallery” of real projects. Here’s an example covering “Work Like an Artist: Daily Routines of Famous Creatives” from a user who adapted information from books on creatives’ work schedules by Mason Currey, Wikipedia, and blog posts.

External data from company user data

If you were looking for data from large companies, many make some of their data public, which can be pulled to create a data analysis or trend report over time. Two good examples of this are:

Spotify Charts

If you want to see how specific music or other media hosted on Spotify is performing over time, check out Spotify Charts, which shows you trends in specific genres of music or by country.

Amazon Sales Data

You can also view trends in Amazon products, such as its best-selling books list or lists of top-selling products in specific categories. External tools, like Amzscout, pull this data to help you see how specific products are selling over time.

Pivot tables

If you want the most simple way to chart your raw data, don’t discount the power of pivot tables and charts in Excel or Google Sheets. These can automatically provide you with charts and other data graphics fast, right within your saved data spreadsheet. There are lots of resources to create effective charts and graphics. It’s important to note Google Sheets may have slightly different formula functions than Excel in some cases.

In conclusion

To learn more about storytelling with data, don’t forget to review our recently updated Learn Center page. Whether you are using a simpler tool like Google Sheets or want to build a beautifully-designed infographic in Tableau, data visualization is a great way to further your storytelling narrative by illustrating your point and growing users’ understanding of the topic at hand.

To see more examples of great data visualizations, check out Juice Analytics’ thoughtful roundup of examples across several different topics and industries.

According to Sprout Social’s survey, 85% of companies rely on social data as a primary source of business insights. And with almost 4.6 million people on social media networks, they are a crucial part of your growth strategy.

It’s no longer news that there’s fierce brand competition — in every industry — roaming the web. So, how do you outcompete your brand competitors and grow your business on social media? By doing social media competitor analysis.

When you learn your competitors’ moves, you find ways to reinforce your brand strengths, improve on your shortcomings, and take advantage of opportunities. In this guide, we’ll go over what social media competitor analysis means, its benefits, the steps to take when performing this analysis, and a list of the tools you need.

What is social media competitor analysis?

Social media competitor analysis is the process of evaluating your competitors on social media to find opportunities and build strategies for brand growth. Performing this analysis allows you to identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to develop a working social marketing strategy. It also reveals relevant information about your target audience, why they’re interested in competitor brands, and how these brands do better at social media marketing.

Why is social media competitor analysis important?

Social media competitive analysis has its own advantages outside the strategy you use to examine your SEO competitors. It allows you to:

1. Understand your ideal clients better

Performing a social media competitive analysis lets you gain deeper insights into who your ideal clients are. Knowing your customer personas empowers you to get more marketing results because you understand:

• What social media platforms your ideal clients use

• How they consume content

• The types of content they’re searching for

• What pain points they need solutions for

• What time they’re active on social media

2. Build a better social strategy

When you understand how and why your competitors are performing better than your brand, you can create a working social media strategy, or improve it if you already have one.

A social media competitor analysis challenges you to do your best because it compares your methods and results against the competition. Also, you can identify gaps to leverage for brand growth, and threats you need to deal with.

3. Create relevant content

It’s only natural that your ideal clients choose the brands whose values and content they align with. A social media competitor analysis will make you top of mind among your ideal clients.

This is because you’ll identify the types and formats of content they want to see. Also, you can take advantage of the content gaps you discover to create fresh, valuable content for your audience.

4. Better marketing and positioning

By conducting a social media competitive analysis, you can leverage your social platforms for more effective marketing. When you see what’s working for your competitors, you’ll start to use relevant, underused social media features and strategies.

More so, this empowers you to come up with a positioning strategy to differentiate your brand from the competition — and become an authority in your industry.

Six competitive analysis tools for social media

Alongside your traditional analytics tools, which we’ll talk about later, you need specific social media tools to perform efficient competitor analysis on these platforms. We’ve included six options below:

1. Not Just Analytics

Not Just Analytics, formerly called Ninjalistics, is an analytic tool for Instagram and TikTok. With this social media competitive software, you can monitor the growth of competitor profiles, the hashtags they use, and their engagement rates.

All you have to do is enter your competitors’ profiles into Not Just Analytics and analyze them. For example, after analyzing Isis Brenna’s Instagram profile, marketing strategist for business coaches, here’s what Not Just Analytics displays:

2. SocialMention

Social Mention by BrandMentions is a search engine for collecting user-generated content on social media, blogs, news, and videos.

Once you enter a competitor brand, Social Mention tracks and shows you all the conversations about them — who’s talking about them, what they’re saying, and on which platforms:

3. Socialbakers

Socialbakers is a social media management tool that makes it easy to monitor all your social media platforms in one place. It works best for agencies.

This tool allows you to measure and compare your content performance to improve brand growth. In addition, Socialbakers has free competitor analysis tools for Instagram and Facebook, and you can analyze up to five competitor profiles.

4. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a suite of social media management tools for better brand marketing. It has scheduling, analytics, and competitor analysis tools for all business sizes and types.

Sprout Social’s competitor analysis feature allows you to monitor your competitors’ audience growth and publishing schedules.

5. Sociality.io

Sociality is a full-service tool for social listening, scheduling, and competitor analysis.

With this social media competitor analysis tool, you can gain insights into your competitors’ paid ad campaigns, social media performance metrics, and content strategy and history.

6. BigSpy

BigSpy is a free tool for analyzing your competitors’ ads on social media. This ad library holds a database of advertisements on different social networks.

BigSpy helps both small businesses and large enterprises find campaign inspiration from their competitors to create better marketing campaigns and social media strategies.

How to do social media competitor analysis

Performing social media competitor analysis doesn’t have to be a hassle. Whether you use Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, or YouTube, here are the five steps to analyze competitor businesses.

1. Figure out your brand goals and metrics

Before examining and comparing competitors’ performances, figure out what you want. It’s important to always start with the end — your brand goals — in mind.

Determine the answers to questions like:

• What are your goals for marketing on social media?

• How do these fit into your overall brand goals?

• What key performance indicators (KPIs) will you track to measure success?

• Who are the ideal clients you want to reach?

2. Identify your brand competitors

It’s impossible to analyze your competitors on social media if you don’t know who they are or which social platforms they use.

Watch out for both direct and indirect competitors — that is, businesses that offer similar products or services and those that solve the same problem as you. Then, list your top five competitors.

You can find out your competitors by:

Using Moz’s free SEO competitive research tool

Enter your site domain and click Analyze domain. You’ll get a list of your top competitors and keywords you can target. You can head over to their websites, find their social handles, and see what they’re doing.

Using Google search

By using the search engine result page (SERP), you can find competitors ranking for your keywords on social media, although this can be a tasking process.

Enter your target keyword and take note of the websites, and especially social media profiles, that pop up during your search.

For example, if you enter the keyword “launch copywriter,” here’s what you’ll find on page one:

From the screenshot above, the websites ranking are likely competitors for that keyword. However, you need to check their social profiles to see if they are also social media competitors.

Foro this query, there’s an Instagram profile ranking as the fifth result and the only social media profile on page one. So, if you were looking to build a strong social presence as a launch copywriter, you’d analyze this profile for their strategies.

Searching on the target social platform

If you’re looking to grow your brand visibility for a specific product or keyword on a social media platform, enter the term in the search bar of that platform and go through the accounts or hashtags that pop up to see if there are competitors you’d like to analyze.

Screenshot from Pinterest’s search bar

Screenshot from Twitter’s search bar

3. Collect and analyze data

Data analysis and collection make up the majority of this process. To make it easier, you can choose a convenient analysis tool from the ones mentioned above to study, analyze, and compare the performance of your competitors.

And while you might have your brand KPIs, here are the important social media metrics to track during competitive analysis:

1. Account reach/impressions

2. Number of followers

3. Engagement rates

4. Social media ads insights

5. Share of voice

6. Estimated organic traffic to the page

7. Quantity of keywords the competitor

Using a simple tool called Keywords Everywhere, figuring out metrics 6 and 7 can be easy.

Install the Chrome extension for this tool. Once done, type “[the social media platform] + [brand name]” in Google Search. Then, move your cursor over the metric kw(us):

For example, when you enter “Instagram.com gucci,” here’s what you get:

This shows that Gucci’s Instagram page ranks for 312 keywords and gets up to 24,600 visits per month.

To further simplify your social media competitor analysis, here are some of the questions you should consider:

• What is your competitors’ audience growth rate?

• How does their content strategy look? What content type do they focus on — informational, entertaining, aspirational, or promotional? Which content formats do they use? Is it videos, texts, lives, carousels, etc.? What is their posting schedule?

• Which posts get the highest engagement, such as likes, comments, and shares?

• What is their engagement rate, on average?

• What other social media marketing types do they use, apart from organic promotions? Is it sponsored posts, collaborations, paid ads, referrals, or influencer marketing?

• How does their hashtag strategy look? Which hashtags do they use? How many, and how often?

Now, compile everything you’ve analyzed so far into a spreadsheet. This makes it easy to track and evaluate data at a glance:

Bonus: instead of creating a spreadsheet from scratch, you can use this social media competitor analysis template by Sprout Social.

4. Create a social media strategy

Data analysis is important when evaluating your social media competitors, but data interpretation is more necessary. Everything in your spreadsheet is only lines, figures, and charts if you don’t know how to use the data collected for business intelligence.

Meagan Williamson, Pinterest marketing expert and business coach says, “When your competitors have impressive metrics, it’s essential to understand what they are doing well to build a better social media strategy. Also, their weaknesses (that is, what they aren’t doing well) can be opportunities for your brand growth. Build a data-driven strategy that allows you to look at what’s working and what’s not, and how you can take advantage of these insights to accomplish your business goals.”

With this spreadsheet information, create a four-part SWOT analysis table for your strategy.

SWOT analysis is a well-thought overview of your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to help you make informed business decisions.

5. Keep tabs on account progress

After doing your social media competitive analysis, that’s not the end. You need to keep tabs on your profile and, of course, the competition. This allows you to:

• Monitor brand progress

• Notice new competition quickly

• See if your social media strategy is working

• Identify new growth opportunities

• Keep your marketing plan up-to-date

It’s crucial to stay on top of both industry and social media trends.

Stick to a routine to regularly analyze your social media competitors — whether that’s monthly, quarterly, mid-yearly, or annually. Also, ensure that you update your competitor research spreadsheet to identify new opportunities or threats.

Wrap up

Social media competitive analysis is vital to your brand growth, as it allows you to build a solid social presence, customer trust, and brand credibility.

By mastering the steps above, you can conduct this analysis for any of your social media profiles. Figure out your brand goals and turn analyzed, organized metrics into context-rich insights to improve your social media strategy.

Back in March, Google announced that the current version of Google Analytics Universal (commonly known as Universal Analytics) will be deprecated as of July 1, 2023, in favor of the new version, GA4.

As a part of this transition, Google will be dropping support and tracking for Universal Analytics (UA), which has been the standard reporting tool for millions of websites since 2012. According to Google, historic data from Universal Analytics will be accessible for “at least six months” after the July 2023 retirement date. Keeping it ambiguous, Google adds:

“In the coming months, we’ll provide a future date for when existing Universal Analytics properties will no longer be available. After this future date, you’ll no longer be able to see your Universal Analytics reports in the Analytics interface or access your Universal Analytics data via the API.”

While 2023 may seem like ample time to prepare for this transition, the truth is you need to check a few boxes sooner rather than later, especially if there are important year-over-year (YoY) metrics that need to be tracked without disruption. In short order, capturing data for next year’s YoY metrics means that your business will need to take action before the end of summer 2022 to ensure:

• Seamless tracking

• YoY reporting (including access to historical data) – the full functionality you want/need from your data and analysis toolset

• Your team is prepared to use the new tools (regardless of what new solution you choose)

Though Google “strongly encourages” users to make the transition to GA4 “as soon as possible”, we’d argue that – given the scale of the change and the work/resources it will require to properly transition to GA4 (as outlined in more detail below), now is the right time to pull up and evaluate your data tracking stack.

It’s too easy to make assumptions about needs and requirements being met based on “what we’ve always used,” and end up backed into a corner.

Instead, let’s explore this in detail and consciously select the right platform for your needs.

How is this different from the last GA platform change?

The transition from GA Classic to Universal Analytics was simple. All you needed to do was update the tracking code on your website. Your data was the same. The interface, metrics, etc. – all largely the same. That’s not the case this time around.

How are GA Universal and GA4 different?

Google made some big changes in GA4 that may take time to adjust to. This has many implications, including large differences in:

• the interface for navigating and setting up the reports

• the base skills/knowledge set needed for people using the new platform

• the data set itself (GA Universal data is not compatible with GA4 data)

• your ability to access and use YoY data

• access to certain (well-loved) functionality, and even some metrics. Some will no longer be available OR require a thorough setup to access.

In short, GA4 is quite literally a re-imagining of how to track and measure website interaction. Much like the transition from USB to USB-C, this means changes to systems/processes, tools, skills/training, and potentially your annual budget, to ensure a smooth transition.

1. Reimagined reporting interface

The most glaring difference between Universal Analytics and GA4 is the reporting interface.

Compared to Universal Analytics, GA4’s interface is more simplified and streamlined. This is because some of the metrics, views, and reports you see in Universal have either been removed or replaced.

The updated interface looks much like Google Data Studio in the way analytics are presented. So if you’re familiar with Data Studio, then navigating GA4’s interface may be more intuitive for you.

Still, changing from what’s known and normal always comes with some level of pain and processing. Even for those who are well-trained in the world of Universal Analytics, adjusting to a new reporting interface will come with some confusion – and perhaps some roadblocks and resistance.

2. Evolving terminology

Once you start perusing the new interface, you’ll notice that Google has changed some of the terminology. “Behavior” is now “Engagement”, “Segments” have become “Comparisons”, and “Channels” is now “User Acquisition”. The “All Pages” reports have been renamed as “Pages and Screens”.

Google has also reorganized the “Audience” reports, and the information that used to be in the “Audience” reports are now in other sections, including “User” and “Acquisition” sections.

Navigating GA4 won’t necessarily be a frictionless experience, especially for those who are regularly immersed in Universal Analytics.

3. Updated measurement models

Universal Analytics and GA4 use different measurement models. While UA relies on a session- and pageview-based data model, GA4 stands on an event-based model. With GA4, any interaction can be recorded as an event.

The somewhat confusing thing about this change is that, in UA (and all previous versions of Google Analytics), an event has an action, category, label, and its own hit type. But in GA4, there is no action, category, or label.

ALL hits are events, and events can contain parameters.

…They don’t have to, though.

For example, in GA4, you can have an event called page_view, and this event can contain parameters: page_title, page_referrer (previous page URL), and page_location (current page URL).

Events in GA4 are grouped into four categories:

1. Automatically-collected events: You don’t have to manually activate these events. GA4 automatically tracks them when you install the GA4 base code. Examples include first_visit, session_start, and user_engagement.

2. Enhanced measurement events: GA4 also collects these events automatically, but you’ll need to enable (or disable) enhanced measurement settings in your Data Stream depending on your website functionality. These events include outbound clicks, scrolls, file downloads, and site searches.

3. Recommended events: These events are not implemented in GA4, but Google recommends that you set them up. If you need an event that’s not collected automatically or is not a part of the enhanced measurement events, you can check for it in recommended events. Examples of recommended events include sign_up, login, and purchase.

4. Custom events: These are events that you can create and implement by yourself. You should only use custom events when you need to track an event that you can’t find in the first three categories. You’ll need to write and design custom code to implement the custom event you want to track. Fortunately for the less code-savvy, Google has rolled out a tool to assist in importing custom events from Universal Analytics to GA4.

Overall, this approach actually allows more flexibility and configurability to WHAT is measured on your site.

However, with more flexibility comes more set up and forethought, so having a documented measurement plan is HIGHLY recommended for GA4.

4. New BigQuery functionality

If you use BigQuery, then you’ll be happy to know that GA4 connects natively to it. With Universal Analytics, the only way users can export data from GA is through the enterprise version (GA360). But with GA4, users can export data at no additional cost.

Keep in mind the way data is structured in GA4 is different from how it’s structured in Universal Analytics. So you might need to remap your GA4 data before you’ll be able to move it into BigQuery (we find this GA3 to GA4 tool helpful in formatting historical data to align with GA4.) Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to run SQL queries more easily.

The BigQuery integration is available, so we definitely recommend setting it up ASAP. Why? Well, GA4 only stores data for a maximum of 14 months (and default settings are only two months), so for accurate YoY comparisons, you’ll need to rely on this year’s BigQuery datasets you gather now or suffer the losses.

5. Removed functionality

Some existing features like views, custom metrics, and content groups will no longer be supported. If your team relies on these existing features, adapting to GA4 will likely involve figuring out how to fill certain measurement gaps. And if the transition becomes too compromising and painful, keep in mind that there are alternatives.

As you’ve likely gathered, moving from GA Universal to GA4 is not a light undertaking. Between adapting to GA4’s new reporting and measurement models and learning its revised labeling and terminology, it’s going to be a heavy transition no matter what your situation entails. Consequently, now is the time to verify that the outcome of all this work will in fact meet your needs.

What does this mean for you and your company?

All users of Universal Analytics (that’s close to… well, everyone, really), will need to start planning for how and where to continue measuring your website performance.

You’ll also need to take action to save your data for 1) posterity and 2) YoY reporting, given that the data set is NOT compatible, nor will be available to you (if you don’t take steps to preserve it). AKA: we also need to plan for when this needs to happen.

In terms of the how and where, ultimately, there are three primary options (four if your team takes a hybrid approach of combining options 2 and 3), each of which is outlined below.

1. Adopt GA4 and update any current measurement programs

The first option is the big one on most people’s minds. That is, opting to use GA4 and taking the proper steps to preserve data integrity and seamless measurement.

If you determine that GA4 is the right fit, the major boxes to check involve identifying measurement gaps and revising KPIs (or measurement protocols) to fill these gaps. You’ll also need to start collecting data (now) for later YoY reporting needs, as well as ensuring your team is up-to-speed on the new GA4 interface.

Given that the interface in GA4 is considerably different from the interface in Universal, any teams currently using the latter will likely require additional time and training to adapt to the new structure.

2. Move to a different hosted analytics platform

Due to some of the identified gaps, we’re exploring options for both free and paid alternatives to GA4 for our own team. Among the free analytics tools worth considering are Clarity, Clicky, and Mixpanel. While the free versions of these tools are great, some offer upgradeable paid options for more robust capacity/capabilities.

Some businesses may find that their requirements are better met by moving to paid tools or premium versions of certain analytics products. Of those worth exploring are Matomo, Adobe Analytics, Heap, Kissmetrics, Heap, and Woopra. The latter two offer free plans but, in our experience, they’re highly limited.

Keep in mind that not all of these analytics tools offer the same level of utility and features, and don’t forget about privacy and security to support GDPR and CCPA regulations, a growing concern for many brands.

While any new tool would require onboarding, many of them offer training as part of the client onboarding process. Most of these analytics options also offer a free trial, so you can vet a platform hands-on before committing to it.

3. Implement an on-premise/first-party data tracking solution (enterprise solution)

On-premise/first-party enterprise solutions can deliver greater utility, privacy, and compliance, depending on how they’re leveraged. Platforms like Matomo and Countly do offer on-premise implementation, meaning that your company would own ALL of the user data, instead of being passed through to Google Analytics (or any other third party).

If you have other owned digital platforms, coupling an on-premise analytics suite with solutions like Looker (owned by Google!) or PowerBI can allow you to access data across different teams and properties easily.

Please note that the implementation of this approach requires fairly heavy dev/engineering collaboration.

How should you evaluate alternative analytics tool sets?

When exploring alternative analytics options, there are many important considerations you’ll want to evaluate. Here are several key factors to help get you started:

• Data ownership: Who actually owns the data? This can be a much larger conversation for companies in regulated industries where more than just marketing stakeholders are involved.

• Privacy concerns: More than data ownership, where is the analytics data being hosted? This means the physical location of the servers where this data is stored. If you require GDPR-compliance, this is essential to know—and get right.

• Accessibility: Will you have access to raw data? How long is data retained? Some analytics platforms will vary.

• Native reporting: What sort of native reporting capabilities are there, and does the platform integrate into your company’s preferred reporting tools (e.g. Google Data Studio, Tableau, PowerBI, etc.)?

• Attribution modeling: How are certain events like conversions determined and assigned across user touchpoints and channels? Does their model align with your attribution definitions? Think about last touch, first touch, etc., across the entire user journey.

• Event & transactions tracking: What out-of-the-box event tracking is available? How do you add user ID tracking, and is it still secure and compliant? E-commerce stores and affiliate marketers may have unique challenges here, especially when it comes to communicating with your web platform, e.g. Shopify.

• Campaign tracking: How does the system report on custom campaign metrics? These include things like UTMs and tracking URLs you get from the various ad platforms you may use.

• Custom tracking: Is custom tracking an option? Does the platform provide their own tag manager, or can you use the tried-and-true Google Tag Manager (that’s probably already installed on your website)? Are there server-side tracking options?

• Cross-domain tracking: Is the analytics platform capable of tracking user activity across more than one domain that you own?

• Data importing: Can you import your old Google Analytics data, seamlessly or otherwise?

• Cost: More than just ongoing monthly/annual fees to use the platform, what set-up fees, implementation costs, and ongoing maintenance efforts are required of you and your team?

There’s clearly a lot to consider when weighing various analytics alternatives. The thought-starters above offer some of the most important considerations to keep in mind. But deciding which data solutions will check the most pertinent boxes for your business can be a time-consuming undertaking in and of itself. To help make this vetting process a bit easier, you can make a copy of this Google Sheet template: Data Solution Option Vetting, which already lists several alternatives.

When should you make the transition from Universal Analytics to GA4?

In the case that you and your team decide to make the transition to GA4, you’ll need to get your ducks in a row sooner than later. The summer of 2023 may seem like ample time to prepare, but your team should start to take prompt action in:

• deciding on a measurement solution,

• preserving historic data, and

• potentially implementing this solution prior to the end of summer 2022, and certainly prior to year’s end.

“Potentially” because some solutions – #3 from above – will simply require more time to implement.

Your data is safe for now: Google will not be removing/deleting your Universal data until the end of 2023. However, to reiterate, if you want to preserve your ability to do YoY reporting, you should take action sooner versus later.

There are some paid solutions to aid this process, but no one is really leading the pack on this one yet. This tool mentioned above can be helpful, however, a complete data export is still a necessary heavy lift.

For now, you can certainly export any of your favorite Google Analytics reports to Excel or Google Sheets using the Export function within the Google Analytics interface. Currently, only GA 360 users have seamless options for exporting their Google Analytics Universal data.

Moving forward

While many current Universal Analytics users will naturally default to GA4, hopefully by now, you’re well attuned to your options. It’s one thing to follow the herd, but it’s another thing to understand the features and limitations of GA4, as well as other analytics platforms, and how those considerations align with your needs and potentially those of your clients.

It would be hard to overstate the value of the education offered at MozCon. From the impressive accreditation of seasoned speakers to the novel thinking of newcomers, MozCon 2022’s presenters delivered a level of actionable advice and inspiration that resoundingly reaffirmed why this event is one of the best-loved in the SEO world.

As a local SEO, it’s my practice to attend the livestream with ears pricked to catch any takeaway that could be useful to local businesses and their marketers. Local was the core focus of a few presentations, but while the majority of MozCon talks are not local-specific, nearly all of them featured applicable expert advice that we can turn to our advantage. Today, I’ll provide my personal rundown of the best tips I gleaned for local businesses from MozCon 2022, I highly recommend pre-purchasing the video bundle to go beyond my recap to a detailed understanding of how to excel in your marketing.

1. Let’s really talk about landing pages

The SEO industry has zoomed in on the critical role both location and product landing pages are now playing in marketing. The former will come as no surprise to local SEOs, and the latter has become an increasing part of our world as the pandemic has driven local businesses to incorporate shopping into their websites. Some of the brightest ideas shared at MozCon 2022 surrounded what belongs on these landing pages.

Recently, you may have read my column encouraging local businesses to emulate actionable Google Business Profile features on their website homepages, and I was gratified to see this strategy echoed and expanded upon by both Amanda Jordan and Emily Brady in regards to location landing pages.

Ross Simmonds made a very strong point that content does not equal blogs, and Amanda Jordan emphasized that it isn’t copywriting that makes a landing page great — it’s features, like:

• Booking buttons

• Reviews

• Social proofs

• Customer UGC, like photos

• Original stats that are strong enough to earn backlinks

• Polls and surveys

• Awards and recognitions

Emily Brady added to this list by encouraging the inclusion of Google Business Profile attributes on location landing pages. She further urged local SEOs to use the 145 types of local business schema to actually inform content strategy for these pages – a suggestion I don’t believe I’ve ever heard before. She noted that SMBs have few enough landing pages to make it feasible to manually create best-in-market, unique content as a competitive advantage.

Amanda Jordan did a study of the top 10 location landing pages across 50 cities and noted the high percentage of them that emphasized these features:

By focusing on features that customers really want, local businesses can solve the longstanding issues Amanda cited as being associated with location landing pages, namely, duplicate and thin content, low user engagement, and lack of conversions.

On the topic of product landing pages, I’ll quote Areej AbuAli who emphasized that, “Filters can make or break an e-commerce website.” Anyone who has ever shopped online knows the truth of this. Her presentation was a deep dive into the care that must be taken to build a strategy for commerce architecture and indexing that takes details like these and more into account:

Meanwhile, Miracle Inameti-Archibong’s presentation on web accessibility was highly applicable to any business that publishes a shopping website and her talk was filled with moments that honestly shocked me. I’ve never used a screen reader before, and I had no idea what terrible UX websites lacking accessibility best practices provide for the 12 million Internet users who have visual disabilities. I also didn’t know that 80% of what we all learn is done through the medium of vision. These facts should be a wake-up call for all website publishers:

• 1 in 8 Americans have a disability.

• People with vision loss consistently report having advanced internet proficiency.

• Working-age people with disabilities cumulatively possess $490 billion in after-tax disposable income.

• 83% of people with accessibility needs shop on sites with accessibility standards, even if prices are higher.

• 97.4% of homepages have accessibility errors.

• Missing alt text accounts for 61% of all homepage accessibility errors.

Miracle Inameti-Archibong had us sit with her though the terrible experience of trying to use a screen reader in this environment and imagine what it is like to try to shop, manage personal finances, or perform other essential day to day activities online, and I was especially moved by her reminder that all of us have causes we care about, but that implementing accessibility is one SEOs actually have the hands-on opportunity to do something about!

In addition to encouraging everyone to download a screen reader to experience their websites in a new way, she extended this Colab resource to help us all begin tackling alt text issues at scale. With a commitment to supporting the agency of all people, we can ensure that both our product and location landing pages are accessible to everybody.

2. Let’s be part of big trends in thought and tech

Local business owners and marketers will benefit from understanding the evolution of both perceptions and possibilities happening in the wider industry.

On keyword research

Wil Reynolds noted that keyword research is how we gain empathy for our customers and Dr. Peter J. Meyers’ presentation of why we need to stop fixating on the bottom of the sales funnel and embrace the messy middle was, in my opinion, some of the best storytelling of the conference.

Both Dr. Pete and Tom Capper urged us to think not in terms of massive keyword volumes but of groupings by human intent, weaving around and about the complex loops of evaluation and exploration. Indeed, an overall theme at MozCon 2022 was that SEOs are rethinking old views of keywords and reenvisioning them in terms of entities, intent, and topics. If we stop trying to continuously sell and focus, instead, on being there in the messy middle, we will be getting so much closer to real journeys than what we see in familiar funnel structures. Tom Capper further advised us to stop thinking of keyword research as grunt work suitable for junior staff and to employ the skillful art of understanding intent so that we end up actually knowing our customers. He also mentioned that this type of research, done well, can help local businesses discover which of their locations are deserving of the most investment.

On content and content marketing

“Google is capable of recognizing first-person expertise,” was a quote from Lily Ray that underpinned her outstanding presentation on why E-A-T should be moving us all to:

• Write in the first person on our websites

• Provide step-by-step instructions and objective advice without selling

• Offer honest pros and cons

• Use first-hand experience to back up claims

• Publish unique images

• Explain why we are qualified to author our content

In her talk on why E-A-T is the most important ranking factor, Lily Ray shared this persuasive screenshot from one of her clients who had been hit by the Medic update and then re-launched a site that emphasized their expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness:

E-A-T is, in my opinion, a gift to local business owners because so many of them possess the kind of expertise that only comes from a lifetime of working in their field. Our role, as local SEOs, is to capture and promote that expertise in a way Google understands.

Meanwhile, Ross Simmonds reminded us all that the phrase “content marketing” includes the word “marketing”. Hitting “publish” is not the end of the journey. Instead, we’ve got to:

I particularly latched on to his suggestion to give out awards and found myself imagining the local links that could flow in if something like a local grocery store formalized giving out awards for “best of county” foods, or a bookstore did the same for best regional authors, or an environmental organization recognized the greenest local businesses. Take this idea and run with it.

Speaking of earning links and publicity, Amanda Milligan told the story of beleaguered local newspapers who are actively seeking content featuring trends in employment and real estate, ways to avoid scams, and “news you can use” articles. She highlighted how some 2,200 local papers have folded since 2005 and explained how those struggling to keep going could be very interested in your contributions to their sections on lifestyle, money, entertainment, sports and news. Gather some original data and offer it to your local and regional newspapers for some highly-relevant press.

And, finally, Crystal Carter’s presentation on visual search re-emphasized the message that content does not equal text. As she noted, “Visual search makes the camera a primary tool for understanding the world.” Crystal is a Level 6 Google Guide and, reminding us that Google can definitely parse images, she encouraged businesses to strategize for solid, consistent, well-lit, unobscured real-world branding, like this:

She also proffered an excellent tip of auditing the photos your customers have uploaded to Instagram and Yelp. Is your branding on the dinner plates of your restaurant? On the uniforms of your staff? On banners at events you sponsor? What is the “that pic” for your business, where customers pose to photograph themselves? Are you uploading great owner photos to your citations so that customers are encouraged not just to shop with you, but to photograph your aesthetics themselves? All of it belongs on your website and Google Business Profile as we enter a multisearch reality and find new opportunities in an environment in which photos have become, not just great content, but queries.

3. Let’s be aware of trends on our periphery

Pretty much anything SEO-related is also part of our local SEO playbook, but sometimes the things SEOs prioritize for remote businesses may exist on the edges of our strategy, rather than at the center, and yet can still be important for us to consider.

A prime example of this is link building. Most truly small local SMBs will not likely have to invest heavily in earning links because our markets are typically finite with a limited number of direct nearby competitors. Nevertheless, more competitive local brands should pay attention to Paddy Moogan’s mention of the fact that 21 of 35 link building tips he presented at MozCon 10 years ago are still good-to-go in 2022, but that he’s observed four trends that have him worried:

1. Asking for links isn’t sustainable — more than half of SEOs spend 1-5 hours trying to build a single link

2. Questionable link relevance — who believes that Google wants to reward a business that builds up a massive, but irrelevant, volume of links?

3. Too much reliance on campaigns — it’s a mistake to focus on big, shiny link building campaigns instead of on actual business impact

4. Unintegrated link building — for agency and in-house link builders, if your work is happening independently of other departments, you face the risk of being squeezed out in times of economic downturns.

Paddy called on SEOs to solve these problems by reframing links as the outcome of an effective content strategy, using the actual and very messy customer journey to spot link building ideas, focusing on evergreen projects instead of one-off campaigns, and being integrated in multi-department work from the get-go. All of this advice is applicable even to small local businesses and their marketers who want to get the most out of smaller budgets of time and money.

Wrapping up, there was one other talk given by Ruth Burr Reedy on remote workplace culture which might not have seemed laser-focused on local SEOs and their clients, but which really stood out to me as having universal wisdom. Whether your local business staff is still fully in-office or has become a hybrid or fully-remote workplace due to the pandemic, the development of an atmosphere of “psychological safety” is valuable for every kind of team.

I’ve been a strong advocate for many years here in my column of the reputational benefits that result from employers trusting employees enough to use their own initiative to support and delight customers. Ruth’s presentation depicting a working environment that encourages staff to be able to ask anything without risk made me think more deeply about the hard work local business owners need to put into developing a full and healthy culture behind the scenes that is felt by every customer who walks in the door.

MozCon 2022 was absolutely replete with deeply technical, practical, and cultural tips that I’ve only been able to touch on briefly today. For the full experience, you’ll need to watch the videos, with their speaker enthusiasm, beautiful decks, and bountiful guidance. Pre-purchase today!

For many of us, there is no greater feeling than winning a new client. It might help you to grow your team, earn yourself a bonus, or achieve a promotion. All of which are great motivators and things to celebrate.

But for me, the reason why winning new business is so enjoyable, is because you’ve just earned the trust of someone else. You’ve connected with them. They’ve bought into your ideas, and now they’re relying on you to help them grow their business.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll be excited to get started. You’ll have poured your heart and soul into winning the new account. And you can now get to work putting into practice all the things you presented so well in the pitch.

For content writers, this might start with an in-depth keyword research piece. Taking your initial pitch data and expanding on it to form a content strategy.

But before you start, have you thought about inviting your new client to a working session to help with your keyword research?

It’s the kind of thing that might make you run for the hills — I would have, not so long ago — but it can be incredibly useful. We often forget that in our excitement to get started, our clients are excited, too. They often want to help, and you can use a working session as an opportunity to tap into their industry knowledge. After all, it’s the subject matter that they live every hour of every day.

In this blog, I’m going to show you why you should do a keyword research working session with your clients, and how it has helped us deliver 65% organic traffic growth for one of our clients with low Domain Authority.

Tried and tested keyword research

Let’s start with what keyword research usually looks like. This will be a great way to prepare for a working session with your new client, which we’ll come to next.

Now, there is already a library of fantastic resources available on Moz to help you with keyword research, each of which go into much more detail than I’m going to:

• Beginners Guide to Keyword Research

• This brilliant Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus Shepard

• A recent Daily SEO Fix on competitive keyword research

• Adriana Stein’s take on low search volume keywords (a personal favorite – especially for help with low domain authority sites!)

I would urge you to devour as much of this as possible. For the purposes of this blog, we’re going to assume that keyword research boils down to three simple things:

1. Keywords you want to rank for

2. Keywords you already rank for

3. Keywords your competitors rank for

To compile this information, we’ll use Moz’s Keyword Explorer (you can use whichever keyword research tool you’re most familiar with, but I find Moz’s tool particularly good for this process).

The example we’re going to use is a real-world example from a keyword research session I had with a client who sells packaging supplies. One of their most important products is cardboard boxes. So we’ll start with that as our initial keyword.

1. Keywords you want to rank for

So, with cardboard boxes as our initial seed keyword, what other relevant keywords can we uncover? Using Keyword Explorer’s keyword suggestions, we can instantly get a good idea of some of the highly relevant and well searched for related keywords.

At this stage, you’re ideally looking to pick out related themes as you scroll through. For example, we can instantly see that several keywords are related to moving. Perhaps that’s something we should investigate further. Secondarily, there are also a few references to size too (small and large), which we’re also going to make a note of.

Within just a few seconds we already have a couple of ideas we can use to help inform our content strategy. And you can keep going, picking out as many interesting keywords or topics as you can.

You can then use these keywords to start building out lists within Keyword Explorer, or export the data and work in spreadsheets if that’s your preferred method.

Remember, at this stage, we’re just looking to prepare for our working session with the client, not create a fully kitted out content strategy.

2. Keywords you already rank for

Unless you’re working with a client in a very unique position of launching a brand new website, you should be able to uncover lots of keyword opportunities simply by researching the keywords the website already ranks for. These are often some of your biggest opportunities to improve and grow traffic from.

A search for your website in Keyword Explorer will return a list of keywords with your ranking position included. You can then export this to excel and filter on keywords you would like to target. In our case, let’s take a look at how our client’s website ranks for terms related to cardboard boxes.

Now that’s interesting. While some of the keywords with the highest search volume were related to moving house, we can see that our client’s website predominantly ranks well for postage boxes. And the search intent behind those two topics is very different. So, we’ll be earmarking this as one to discuss with the client.

3. Keywords your competitors rank for

Possibly the most important part of keyword research is to check what your competitors are ranking well for, but you’re not. You can do this in Keyword Explorer simply by adding one or two domains to your search when searching by website:

And when we do this, we uncover another opportunity:

While there are lots of keywords related to cardboard boxes that are of interest to us, it is double walled cardboard boxes that stand out here. There are several variations and a good number of searches per month, so, that’s definitely one to discuss during the keyword research working session.

After some very quick keyword research, we’ve uncovered four potential topics we could discuss from our initial cardboard boxes seed keyword:

• Boxes for moving

• Boxes by size

• Postal boxes

• Double walled boxes

If we were doing this for real, we would have uncovered plenty more opportunities, too. And if you stop here, you can still have great success building out a content strategy and creating highly relevant, optimized content to target these keywords.

But as great as our SEO tools are for keyword research, they don’t always tell the full story. That’s where a working session with your client can help.

Keyword research working sessions

Working alongside your clients at this stage can feel a little daunting, and it can be hard to relinquish control. It’s your job, and you have the expertise and the instincts to be successful. You might be thinking that the last thing you need is the client demanding something you know will be near impossible to achieve before you’ve even got started.

But as mentioned above, we also need to appreciate that as good as keyword research tools are, they don’t show the full picture. Even cross-referencing against Search Console can leave us skeptical. And so, tapping into the knowledge your clients have might just lead to you discovering some great content ideas and keywords to target.

How to approach a keyword research working session

So, how do you go about approaching a keyword research working session yourself? Start by asking yourself a few simple questions:

Who should be involved?

Depending on the size of your client, you might have multiple contacts on their side. Think about who would be best placed to discuss the products in detail. The MD or CEO won’t need to come along. But someone like the Head of Marketing, along with a senior buyer would have all the knowledge you need.

And in your own team, do you need to invite several people or keep it small? It might depend on how big the client is, but to get the most out of your session, it might be best to keep the attendees at a minimum. This will be a decision for you, your circumstances and how best you work as a team.

How many sessions do you need?

Again, this depends on the specifics of your client and your scope of work. If you’re working on a small retainer, just one session will be enough. But if this is a big client with a sizeable retainer, perhaps you’re going to need a handful of sessions to cover various topics that you’ll be hoping to rank for.

What does your client need to prepare?

The best thing your clients can do is come prepared with detailed knowledge of their products and which products are most important for them. Which products provide the greatest profit margin? Which products are they struggling to get hold of due to issues in the supply chain? Which products are stacked up in the warehouse that they need to shift? As much information as possible.

What do you need to prepare?

You should prepare well, either by following the recommendations in this blog or by going through your own keyword research process. But beyond that, you also need to have an open mind. Let your client contribute their own thoughts and take it from there.

What happened at our own keyword research session?

In our example, we got talking about the different sizes of cardboard boxes available. The client explained it was a hugely important factor for their customers. No business wants to be shipping empty space in boxes that are too big for their products. And no business wants to be cramming products into boxes that aren’t big enough.

So we took a closer look at boxes by size and discovered there were plenty of low volume searches related to box dimensions. These are great keywords for us to be targeting, either on product pages or within facet navigation.

You might suggest the search volume is too low to care too much about. But you’re missing a big opportunity if you take that approach.

Remember, our client has a low Domain Authority. Competing for some of the top generic keywords is not going to happen overnight, so we’ll need to be clever in our keyword targeting. And as Adriana Stein notes in her brilliant blog on low search volume keywords:

“[For] low authority sites in competitive niches, it takes months (or maybe even years) to rank for a [highly competitive] keyword.

[…]

“Specific and niched keywords are exactly what accelerate your organic traffic growth and business revenue – even when you don’t have the domain authority, brand awareness, or resources of your more established competitors.”

So, with that advice in mind, in this example I was not concerned about seeing low search volume at this stage. Rather, I was quite excited about it. And then, as we were looking at these low volume dimensions, the client picked out an odd-looking keyword to me and noted: “Oh, that’s interesting.”

Interesting? I have to be honest, if I was browsing these keywords by myself, I’m really not sure I’d have picked this one out. To my untrained eye, it’s just a few unidentifiable numbers with low relevancy.

“That’s a FEFCO code.” My client told me.

A what?

“A FEFCO code. It’s what our customers ask us for every day. When you’re selling cardboard boxes, you’re talking in FEFCO codes.”

Bingo:

All of a sudden, we have a whole new bunch of incredibly relevant keywords for us to target. And not just relevant from an SEO perspective, but also in the language our client’s customers would understand.

I’m happy to admit that getting to this point would have been impossible on my own. I needed my client’s insight and knowledge of the industry to find these keywords.

So what about you? Have a think. Are you missing some hidden gem keywords?

Results

Working this way has resulted in an organic traffic increase of 65% year-on-year:

Beyond traffic acquisition, organic revenue has also increased significantly. Not only that, but our client also regularly updates us that they’re receiving inbound calls from potential new customers who have found them online.

The success in keyword targeting is perhaps best visualized with a look at their historical keyword rankings:

We started working with this client in 2020. And really, before 2021, there were only a handful of keywords in the top 10 according to Ahrefs data. That is now over 1,000. And best of all, because we’ve been working so closely with the client, we know we’re targeting the right keywords.

Additional benefits of working sessions with your clients

If you’re still not convinced, consider the additional benefits that this working session will bring:

• You’ll be able to build on the connection you’ve made during the pitch, to help you build a long-lasting working relationship for years.

• Your clients will be highly engaged and excited to work with you. And they’ll appreciate the time you’re taking to hear from them in detail.

• They’ll also get a front row seat to see how much hard work goes into your content strategy and planning from minute one, appreciating your expertise with the SEO tools you use.

• All of which helps to facilitate a team spirit and culture of working together, rather than lapsing into a confrontational client vs agency relationship should things go wrong (and we know with SEO, sometimes we can’t guarantee results!)

With all of the above in mind, by making a little extra effort to schedule a keyword research working session, you’re far more likely to retain clients over the long term.

Conclusion

The additional benefits alone should be reason enough to undertake a keyword research working session with your clients. And when it comes to optimizing low Domain Authority websites in competitive niches, any help you can get is valuable.

But more than that, you might just uncover a few hidden gems for content ideas. And that’s something that’s incredibly valuable whatever the budget you’re working with.

These sessions don’t replace your traditional keyword research. You should still do that, too. But this is a great way to supplement that research with evidence from those at the coalface.

And if you get just one great content idea that you hadn’t otherwise considered, it will be worth it.

Spongebob and Patrick. Batman and Robin. Tom and Jerry.

These iconic dynamic duos simply wouldn’t be the same by themselves, and you can think of SEO and PPC in the same way.

You may be thinking, “But, I always thought I needed to spend my money on one or the other!”

Well, friend, I’m here to let you in on a little secret: These two, when paired together, provide you with a digital marketing double whammy. A marketing strategy based only on SEO or PPC is truly “putting your eggs in one basket”. Any business that doesn’t diversify the way they get customers isn’t realizing its full potential.

Both SEO and PPC are used for a common goal — search engine marketing (SEM) — and neither would survive without targeted keywords. Since both strategies have user intent and search demand in mind, you can:

• Create an organic and paid strategy that surpasses your competitors and uses an optimized budget.

• Maximize efficient content production that can be used both for SEO and PPC.

• Expand brand SERP awareness by ranking both organic and paid.

• Inform SEO campaign with PPC data and vice-versa (SEOs have deep insights on search intent, while Paid traffic specialists understand how keywords convert).

• Achieve both short-term and long-term business goals.

When approached correctly, using SEO and PPC together can unlock significant opportunities for your brand, so let’s dig in!

A brief overview of SEO and PPC

Let’s take a quick look at the similarities and differences of these powerful strategies so you can better integrate both into your SEM strategies:

Main differences

Time to achieve goal

PPC provides more of a jump start, while SEO is similar to finding your life partner. SEO takes longer and is structure-based, whereas PPC is quick, focusing mainly on landing pages and click-through rates.

One important thing to mention here is that, even though PPC is faster in the beginning, it costs more in the long run. While advertising requires constant payments to sustain, SEO brings in returns long after content has been published, even if you simply just let it sit (though of course some sharing and promo always helps).

The best case scenario is to balance them both: use PPC to power up the engine, but let SEO be the fuel that consistently keeps the engine running.

Skills needed for task

You may think, “SEO is free”, and although it might be if you do it on your own, there’s still a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that go into a successful SEO strategy. SEO skills typically include:

• Content writing

• Ability to use a CMS

• SEO tools know-how

• Keyword research

• SERP analysis

Think research, writing, design, editing, publishing, and promotion. Of course, if you hire an SEO strategist, it fast-forwards your plan because they’ve developed proven processes.

On the flip side, PPC requires skills such as:

• Copywriting

• Analytics and conversion tracking

• Keyword research

• SERP analysis

• Ability to use Google Ads platform

There’s a lot more to it than that, but those cover the majority of the overarching skills.

Calculating ROI

PPC ROI can be found by observing the CTR and conversion rate in comparison with number of sales. The goal should be that you get more sales than you pay in ad spend and campaign management. With tools like Google Data Studio that integrate with your CRM, it’s possible to automate PPC ROI calculation.

SEO ROI can be found by using a similar formula:

Gain from investment – cost of investment / cost of investment.

Keep in mind, for B2B lead-based businesses, SEO ROI tends to be much more complex than e-commerce. With B2B, you need to track the organic traffic of pages purposed for lead generation, like your contact or inquiry form’s success page, because there is no direct website sale.

Similarities

As mentioned above, both strategies mainly target the SERPs. As a result, the keyword process for both should ALWAYS have user intent in mind and consider search demand.

Long-tail keywords for SEO might look like:

• Tax software for small businesses

• Digital tax software for entrepreneurs

Meanwhile, PPC keywords are separated into four categories:

1. Phrase match – the ad is shown if there are different words before or after the keyword you’re targeting

2. Negative match – a word or words you don’t wish to target while running your ad

3. Broad match – a general phrase or word you’d like to target

4. Exact match – an exact word/phrase you’d like to target

Organic keywords for SEO are more critical inside the context of a webpage compared to PPC keywords that are more crucial inside the ad copy (though ideally, both should have the keywords in the copy that appears in the SERPs and on the page).

Ultimately, they both share a common goal: to attract relevant users to your website with the goal of turning them into customers.

How PPC and SEO work together to drive business growth through keywords

PPC can instantly unveil important keywords that can be transferred into your SEO strategy. For example, take AS Marketing’s very own client, Kindly, a B2B tech company based in Norway who sells various conversational AI tools for websites. With this project, we first focused on using organic keywords to build SEO content strategy. Then once content was published and started ranking, we regularly checked the same search terms within our Google Ads campaigns. This meant we could see the top keywords that our ads were appearing for in pretty much “real-time”, allowing us to combine this data so that we could create content that worked for both channels.

As a result of our collaboration, we achieved the following results:

• 312% organic traffic growth globally and 10X organic growth in Sweden, one of their key markets

• 5X increase in keywords ranked #1-10 in 11 months

• 107% increase in conversions

For a detailed overview of how this works, here’s our step-by-step guide to leverage this information.

Step 1: Bring the keyword data together

It’s all in the data friends. Seriously, fuse together SEO and PPC data in a spreadsheet, or even better, track ongoing efforts and data in Google Data Studio (for free!)

Here are the top metrics to jot down:

• Search Volume: how many times a word has been searched on a monthly basis.

• Competition: what others in your niche are ranking for.

• Cost Per Click: how much it costs when someone clicks your link.

• ROI: what is your average return on investment for both PPC and SEO.

• Organic Impressions: how many times a site is viewed in a search engine result page.

• Organic Clicks: how many people have seen your site via organic search and clicked on it.

• Organic CTR: this term goes hand in hand with the one above. Organic click-through rate pertains to the percentage of people that have clicked on your page when they’ve seen it in the search results.

• Organic Position: when you determine the organic position of a particular keyword, you can see which keywords are being ranked in Google’s top 100 results. This report also helps to gather useful competitor ranking data.

• Paid CTR: paid click-through rate is the same as the organic click-through rate but for ads. It is the percentage of people that have clicked on your ad after viewing it.

• Conversions Data: is crucial in order to improve your content and messaging. A conversion is a point at which a recipient performs a certain action. It could be filling out a form or booking a call. Conversion data is commonly tracked in Google Analytics.

When you have everything laid out in front of you, it’s easier to spot patterns and recognize how both SEO and PPC efforts are panning out.

Step 2: Do keyword research

And now for the most important part of this entire process: the stage where you find keywords that can work both for PPC and SEO.

As you go through your keyword research process to find your SEO driven keywords, make sure you utilize Google Ads ‘Search Terms’ report. This part of Google Ads allows you to see search terms that have triggered your ads, making it easy to find “real-time” keywords. It also allows you to see what search terms are trending, so if you notice the same type of keywords keep appearing, it’s probably worthwhile to dig deeper into how you can utilize these keywords into your content strategy. Here’s an example of what to keep your eyes peeled for:

Throughout this process, you’ll also want to check items like:

• Understand each keyword’s customer journey stage: How close to buying are the users? Are they in the MoFu (middle of the funnel) or the ToFu (top of the funnel) stage? Understanding the funnel stage is important, because you wouldn’t want to send someone to a sales landing page if they’re just trying to understand the basics of a new concept.

• Gather more insights on search intent per each keyword: If PPC and SEO search intent matches, that’s a great case for a dual-purpose page! For instance, we noticed with Kindly that many users were searching for keywords related to their core product, a conversational AI chatbot. With this search intent match in mind, we used previously created SEO landing pages and also drove paid traffic to them in order to increase the amount of conversions and leads generated.

• Understand how well your content is performing for each query: Is the content good enough for those keywords? Do you need to strengthen examples, incorporate more images, or shorten the article?

• Create actions to improve SEO and PPC from the same keyword analysis: Which keywords have higher search demands and which have higher competition? Depending on your ad budget and authority ranking, you want to approach SEO and PPC accordingly.

• Check SERPs for keywords that rank both organically and with paid advertising with similar content: Is it helpful to rank both paid and organically? Should you focus your resources or create content that works for both? The answer here isn’t clear-cut. It depends on your strategy, target audience, competition for the keyword, and general business goals.

Step 3: Create content with the right format

How can we get the most bang for our buck here? By creating landing pages that work for both PPC and SEO with sections like this:

• Conversion hero header with organic- keyword-optimized H1.

• Section blocks that cover conversion elements but also answer key audience questions. This will ensure your text is broken up, easy to read, and efficient.

• People Also Ask ranking opportunities with a FAQ section at the bottom. Target long-tail keywords and craft valuable content to capture the audience that uses People Also Ask when searching.

One important caveat here is that this strategy won’t work for every keyword. This is why understanding search intent and reviewing SERPs is so important, because it’ll reveal where those content opportunities are. For example, if you find that SERPs are filled with blog article results and no ads for a certain keyword, you may consider only creating the blog article.

Going back to our client Kindly, we mentioned that we regularly checked PPC search terms against our SEO keywords and ensured we understood the user intent of every keyword. It became clear that PPC was driving MoFu and BoFu keywords, meaning users were pretty much ready to buy the product. In this scenario, we knew we needed a high converting landing page that was focused singularly for the purpose of PPC.

Some examples of high converting keywords were “AI Chatbot for my website”, “AI Chatbots for Lead Generation” and “AI Chatbot for ecommerce”. From this data, we knew we needed to create a landing page that accommodated different types of use cases, so we created a landing page with a dynamic headline that catered to all keywords.

That is just one scenario, and this strategy may not work for everyone, so it’s important to understand what your customer wants and when they want it. Then you can understand when to lean into your PPC or SEO strategy and at which point of the sales funnel.

Step 4: Implement & track your strategy

For aligned SEO and PPC synergy, keep these applications in mind:

1. Identify new keyword opportunities for both channels. Use the Moz keyword explorer tool to prioritize keywords that matter, outrank your competition, and research keywords that align with your business goals.

2. Optimize SEO efforts by targeting keywords with higher conversion rates. Keywords that have high search volume AND high conversion rates are the most likely to bring in the big bucks.

3. Improve PPC efforts by aligning ads with organic search intent. For instance, say you discover a specific keyword with a high conversion rate for your PPC campaign. With this data, you can easily incorporate that keyword into your content marketing strategy to strengthen your SEO efforts.

4. Reduce costs with PPC in the middle term by targeting favorable opportunities with SEO efforts. As you continue to grow through organic search, it’ll become easier to spot what works from what doesn’t and apply that to your PPC campaigns. For instance, specific copy that resonates with your audience on your website can be repurposed for PPC ad copy.

5. Boost usage data (page acquisition and interaction etc.) with PPC to gain more data and inform SEO efforts. By increasing traffic to your site through PPC, you can further analyze your SEO strategy and understand which content types are most interesting to your audience, which pages don’t resonate, and which pages are obtaining the most conversions.

6. Last but not least, actual conversion tracking is important!Event tracking allows us to see the impact from both SEO & PPC efforts. For example with Kindly, we set up tracking not only for the number of leads, but we also tracked micro conversions such as button clicks on the navigation. By doing this, we were able to see the process of the sales funnel and which awareness, consideration and conversion keywords triggered that process. Consequently, we could determine the best URLs for each PPC campaign. With this in mind, you can also optimize your website for all marketing purposes and notice where users drop off.

Merging your SEO & PPC keywords brings proven results

By taking the steps above, you can begin to merge your SEO & PPC strategies together and be more in tune with your sales funnel, i.e. generate more leads and sales. By keeping your marketing strategies as best friends, you can achieve great results such as in the images below:

SEO Results:

PPC Results:

Now, let’s crack on to the recap:

• Quickly discover high converting keywords from PPC and incorporate them into your SEO strategy

• Create content that converts both via organic and paid channels

• Improve brand SERP awareness (helloooo organic and paid traffic!)

• Align and combine your short-term and long-term business goals

And to extend on what I mentioned previously, ‘knowledge is power’ BUT it isn’t power until put into action.

Here are your actionable steps to slingshot your business forward by combining SEO and PPC:

1. Bring the keyword data together

2. Do your keyword research

3. Create content with the right format

4. Implement and track your strategy

Teamwork makes your dream work!