There you go! I have promised to myself (and the people who asked me for advice and feedback) that I will share more posts and knowledge. It has been more than a year since I launched the blog and the commitment has not been completed 🙁
Anyway, here is the first post and many more to come. I am happy to share my notes from the Inbounder Digital Marketing Conference 2018 which I attended last month in Madrid.

I am not the usual goer to big conferences, but this one is definitely worth it and gonna repeat! Two days packed with interesting digital marketing information, ideas, practical examples and a cocktail of knowledgeable speakers who you may want to follow 🙂

Without further ado I am finally putting my notes and links to the presentations 🙂

Straight to Future – Gianlucca Fiorelli

I have seen him speaking live after following his SEO info on MOZ.com and reading his tweets 🙂
Presentation: Imago mundi – The Present and Future of Visual Search and Marketing

Gianlucca has confirmed that Google images are often underrated as it comes to traffic opps, but they represent 22% of web searches.

• Besides the usual suspects like the image file name, alt and title tags, don’t forget to optimize the content surrounding the image.
• Structured data for images (for products, recipes, carrousels, AMP articles, logos, local business and video)
• Create and submit image XML sitemaps to boost the images indexation.Looking for inspiration? Look at the image tags on Google Image Seach results for keyword ideas.
• I find it interesting to test the Pinterest Lens and use them for data mining keyword ideas. Google is getting better at image recognition and we should help it even further.
• Pinterest optimization – SERP is changing (yeah, you know featured snippets, images, video, people also ask :)), invest in optimising for other entities, other properties to get more visibility and real estate.
• SEO for Pinterest Lens:
  – organize boards by tags
  – boards are considered topical hubs
  – use the Pinterest Suggested keywords
• Rich pins – read the SEER Pinterest Guide.
• Visual Search as a product
• brick and mortar catalogue
• reverse engineering recipesVisual Search is important for Ecommerce sites. The Home Depot can find the tool you need even if you don’t know its name from a photo you take from your phone.
  

  Aleyda Solis – SEO PM for Successful Processes

  I am a big fan of Aleyda Solis and was looking forward to hearing her presentation. She is really charismatic and knowledgeable, but this specific presentation didn’t provide me with anything new or quite specific that I can apply apart from a tool which I have never heard for screenshots. Anyway, check it out for yourself here: SEO Project Management for Successful Processes.

  The SEO work is complex and involves much communication, dedication and follow-up. Bear in mind that SEO processes fail due to SEO project management issues rather than pure SEO challenges.
  When you start a new project, don’t forget to set your minimum requirements and save yours and the client’s time 🙂
  If your client doesn’t have resouces, think about what you can do with their limited resouces, build a case around it. I liked this advice and can confirm from my personal experience that the value you bring doesn’t come from your super duper SEO experience, but rather your ability to understand the project and find what will bring the most value for this specific business, industry and current resources. We all love dream big, but adapting to changes and limitations is a must. There is no such thing as an ideal world.

  They are saying that they have all the resources which you need. Yes, well, try to confirm, more often than not the dream story doesn’t come true (Italic is mine when you realize that your squad will not work full time for SEO or they simply will work on what they are told to + your asks, but NOT all asks).

  • Aleyda recommended for screenshots Marker.io, try it out.
  • Think whether the process supports growth, is this a critical or an easy task?
  • Set up regular check-ins with stakeholders. I am saying: YESS, do it now. This helps a lot. Hope to share my personal experience and framework soon, failures and success cases 🙂 But, you know, you should have set up your check-ins like yesterday, so do it now.
  • Tools for kw evolution and rankings: SEOMonitor, Accuranker, AWR
  • Set up GA alerts to identify traffic dips easily!

  Alba Vargas – Growth beyond digital

  Slideshare: Going Beyond Digital Marketing to Make Your Business Grow

  Melanie Deziel – 5 keys to compelling brand content

  Melanie Deziel @mdeziel

  Slideshare: TRUTHful Stories: The 5 Keys to Compelling Brand Content

  Minimum content requirements for successful brands:

  • Unique: Build profiles and features ( people at our company, profile of clients, founder, partners, partnerships). Create unique, differentiated content (this deserves bold with so much content in the world, make a difference).
  • Reputable: content with data from 3rd party, feeback, influencers feedback, diversity of sources, experienced and educated (academic resources) etc.
  • Teach: anything that is relevant to the industry or the company you are in: diy, how to type of content, deep dives, profiles and features from experts, behind the scenes, history of the company.
  • Tension
  • Human connection
    I loved the example about content about real women inmates for Netflix Orange is the new black.

  Think about the growth beyond digital. What is the customer experience and journey? Is the customer journey as a metro map, this was a really powerful example.

  • put our audience 1st
  • tell the truth
  • teach – diy, how to, deep dive content
  • Why do we consider ourselves to be the best, what is surprising about us, what is our journey as a company.
  • What are the ingredients of our products, key differentiator, how do we do better as a company?
  • What do they lose if they don´t use our product?
  • questions, struggles, risks, debates, goals and accomplishments
  • journalistic storytelling, key element in the journalistic storytelling: human connection
  • put a face to face case person who shows what it is<
  • relate more to people, to the human part of the story. BIG data is big, but behind the data we have humans, think about humans more than graphs, graphs cannot explain the phychological part of things.

  SEO will never die – Markus Tandler

  Presentations here and here.

  • Progressive web apps -I recommend you to read and dig deeper, it is the future.
  • Markus talked about the mobile 1st index – Google migration to mobile 1st, desktop 2nd.
  • Google bought Xively – big data, IoT is coming
  • mobile experiences- 1. speed 2. rendering 3. engagement
  • App indexing API
  • XML feeds for data
  • JSON LD – linked data in the context of data

  = structured data / entities (I loved the examples with dogs in SERP :)))

  SEO starts optimising around entities.

  quality, freshness

  = Mobile 1st index – cloud 1st indexing

  Google Cloud platform

  = invest time in learning more about APIs – how to connect data with APIs

  • • rendering + voice search (no  URL)
    • easier discovery
    • Mobile 1st – AI
    • follow Cindy Crumm for mobile updates!!
    • Tech marketers – the future of full stack tech marketers (Write a post what it is to be a full stack tech marketer)
    • Keywords vs voice search
  • Prepare for conversational search with FAQ type of content (more and diverse keywords for FAQ – style content)
  • Position 0 – home results, featured snippets 
  • how to push a change – fetch and render use FR in webmaster tools – test, Markus claims that this influences the position 0 (it is updated in hours, I have not observed this personally, but if you see any impact, drop me a line, I am testing it out.)

  Fake Content – Bas van den Beld

  Bas shared that bloggers and journalists are lazy, there is overlapping content.
  Fake news present not facts, but emotions. Why does this work? We like to be fooled, this brings us emotions.

  Stories which provoke emotions.

  Our memory determines what we believe in.
  Our habits get in the way we believe things that relate to our memory.
  We cannot trust anyone, not even ourselves. 

  It is our job as marketers to educate.
  Here we can find useful tips for speaking with persuasion.

  Talia Wolf – CRO and Experiences

  I have never met Talia in the web space, her talk was quite exhilarating and useful. I signed up for her resources and recommend you to do it as well.

  Slideshare: How to Create Experiences People Love to Convert with.

  Focus on what the user is getting from using your site and product. Stop claiming that you are the best, emphasize that “this tool will make you work faster/stand out”.

  UX optimization: lower loading time, CTA buttons, reduce steps in form, change headline, add an exit popup

  • Data mine competitors reviews to see what users want
  • Define the content of the page based on the state of awareness of the user

  A/B Test colors, copy, elements, visuals.

  Tools:

  • Facebook competitor insights
  • Google optimize for A/B tests
  • GTM to get data on custom dimensions

  How to create experiences that people love to convert to? Try to answer this question with all your marketing activities and you will get it right.

  Everything we buy, there is an underlying emotional reason for it.

  I liked Talia’s point and agree that many marketers and product managers focus on the WHAT, but it´s the WHY that matters (why it is for me, what is in it for me). Explain the WHY to the customer and they will get the WHAT.

  Data-driven vs emotion:

  CRO revolves around solving problems of the customers, what is the customer problem. The issue with data is that it tells only one part of the story. What does it mean to be data-driven? We must be customer-driven, which are the core questions that will solve the customer´s problem?

  Download emotional content strategy spreadsheet.  

  • speak to your customer 1st
  • it all starts with the Why. Keep asking why until there are no Whys left!
  • get to the bottom of it by keeping asking questions, no Whys
  • analyze competitor websites to identify pains, complaints
  • customer-driven tests
  • data-driven –  at transactions
  • customer-driven – experiences and keep them coming back
  • check Talia´s getuplift CRO resources and techniques

  Ricardo Tayar – CRO

  Presentation: It’s a Long Way to the Top if you Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll: Main Drivers & How Conversion Works in Different Markets

  Data + context = information

  

  I liked Ricardo’s example that the right equation is data plus context that gives you information. You cannot advance without having one of them.

  FLAT 101 – conversion framework

  System usability scale to measure UX, you can download the conversion framework here.

  

  FYI The talk was good, I am sure that it could be even better as I had been checking some of Ricardo’s stuff before. Actually I recommend you his ebook if you understand Spanish, it has been added to my wishlist and cannot wait to get to it.

  Mobile Search – Cindy Krum

  Slideshare: Mobile Search is The New Normal.

  

  Google is using more and more content based on entities (not websites). For example, if you take a  local business: you can book a yoga session without entering the gym’s website. In the end, Google’s goal is to become  the transaction layer.

  Brands must classify content for entities, also Google My Business, G+, knowledge graph, etc.

  It is not about mobile 1st, it’s AI first + machine learning (voice).
  You want to do real, future-proof SEO? Then index everything, all technologies + devices.
  From website on desktop to apps and mobile, index everything!
  Entity indexing = language agnostic objects.

  • Entity indexing is like kw targeting, but exists outside of the world of keywords.
    Knowledge graph
  • Google market finder – entity tool – useful tool for market research etc.
  • Google cloud natural language API — useful entity tool – it works with checking a URL or text to be published. It shows how words work together.
  • Top level entity – domain entity (brand).
  • View Entities as subdomains – optimise for sub-topics, entities
    Google model for cross-device entity indexing
  • Progress Web apps to Gplay
  • 1st test with SMBs – 1st entities, change google business entities to add info

  Google wants to be the info layer of the internet and the transactions layer for SMBs (this is why it offers cloud solutions).
  Brand entities
  Optimise non-website properties – entities like video, image, channels to boost the brand entities.

   Samantha Noble – Paid Media 

  I am not from the Paid Media world (yet!), so I found this presentaiton quite interesting and packed with much useful info.

  Slideshare: Paid Media Strategies to Target Customers Throughout the Marketing Funnel.

  List of platforms for paid to be visible in all the funnel:

  = FB event response ads messenger
  = FB leads engagement – create a custom engagement
  = FB Video ad engagement – short videos
  = FB competitor insights – see what type of organic content competitors use!
  = Google local search map ads – the prediction is that it soon will be paid space for small advertisers

  • Trueview for Google shopping
  • Shoppable ads on instagram (worth trying it out).
  • Amazon shopping ads for Amazon
  • Inventory Search from G Knowledge graph
  • Attribution model review, depending on the biz

  Krista Seiden @kristaseiden – Measurement for Growth

  Krista shared that she dislikes growth hacking, because it is all about growth marketing. Her thoughts on growth marketing here. I liked her talk even though I still think that growth hacking is not that bad 😀

  1. product market fit
  2. growth marketers are needed at all stages
  • capturing and acquisition – campaign, event, page, form tracking

  cross-domain tracking

  growth → clean data in place

  • use datalayer GTM to collect information
  • custom dimensions with datalayer – collect custom info
  • Analytics data + UX to fix issues

  Lexi Mills – PR tips

  Digital Storytelling and the Future of Marketing

  • Create content for topics that have a positive trend on Google trends and similar sites, always research content topics and think how you will differentiate from others. 
  • Talk about most popular amazon products.
  • Use Gorkana database to target local media (national media get content from them)
  • Use tags that similar stories are using in Google news to maximize the story visibility.
  • Contact publishers that have covered similar stories (aka good old outreach 🙂
  • Provide exclusive images, interviews, data, videos, etc.

  Russel Mcathy

  @rustybear

  Slideshare: Consumer not Customer, Value not Revenue, Actions not Numbers

  Attribution of revenue often devalues SEO channel due to visits that are not leading to a direct conversion.

  Use advanced segments in GA where SEO is involved.

  Opportunities in marketing to the middle of the funnel, read it here.

  • SEO + PPC generic = work on getting better joint efforts
  • Revise attribution models to understand the distribution.
  • Team up with the retargeting team to power up SEO visits (get paid boost).

  Purna Virji @purnavirji

  Bing voice search + image recognition
  2018: A New Search Marketing Odyssey

  • Bing getting better at image recognition
  • Use top phrases for voice search
  • AI – Era of search
    Intelligent search (home, connected)
    visual search optimisation
    Bing – image pinch material and shop products

  Visual Search Checklist:

  • optimize images
  • optimize the feed
  • mark it up – structured data for images
  • XML sitemaps for images

  Structure data investments – knowledge data
  Featured snippets – conversational search
  Use shorter descriptor words – best, new

  Voice Search checklist:

  • Structured data
  • Answer questions
  • PPL also ask / suggestions
  • Featured snippets
  • Local listings
    (read Dr Pete MOZ featured snippets guidelines)

  Bing chatbot feature for PPC
  Audience targeting – future big % of digital advertising. Audience targeting to offer more personalized content and have higher CR.

  Mike King – ipullrank A/B testing

  What to Do When Everything Goes Wrong

  It was a great talk, make sure to review my notes and the presentation 🙂

  A/B testing
  Implement SEO in testing asap across teams and projects
  know who you work with
  CS 24 / 7

  AI:
  revise plugins
  update to VP 4.94 + woocommerce 33.1
  new PHP version
  nginx > apache
  nginx – total cache, memcached
  code coverage report to spot del code
  natural language generation is used by reputable vrabd.
  phrase text – tool, check

  keep up with the front end dev + trends (CSS in JS, cssinjs.org):
  www.contentful.com
  www.staticgen.com
  gatsbyJS
  nextJS
  reactJS

  If you are not that technical, make sure that you understand how the DOM works. Computed DOM – view source vs look into the code, understand the difference and invest in understanding how the DOM works, this will pay off.

  auditing JS for SEO – Justin Briggs, check it out
  Distilled ODN
  G causal impact – experiments

  Machine learning for Marketers – read the guide on Ipullrank.

  Peep Laja – More Wins with CRO

  Get More Wins: Repeatable Patterns in Conversion Optimisation

  Look for the repeatable patterns, this is what the user is  looking for!

  Longevity – how do we learn, how do we live a longer life?

  Tactics that work for competitors might not be working for you. We need to test.

  New tactics soon become obsolete.

  Test and measure all changes.

  Examples: change background image, quick links, pop-up, number of fields in a form, pre-filtering products as “most popular” to facilitate choice.

  Create GA events for each tactic to monitor results.

  Ecommerce – list the benefits below the top navigation (free shipping etc.)

  • 1st order pop-up
  • subscription- from product to cart page (on product) to boost conversions
  • free shipping – below product, specify the shipping within X days
  • qualitative research to understand what matters to bring hypothesis + CRO elements. Use survey polls, in person reviews, ML for qualitative research (Intellimines).
  • do conversion research – websites are highly contextual

  I have always thought of the master degree of CXL institute, gonna check it out, CRO is dear to my heart 🙂 And Peep is an energetic, inspiring person, it was great to see him!

  Do your :)) Weight Heavy Lifting :)) for a longer life 🙂

  Lindsay Wasel – ORM

  ORM – How To Do Online Reputation Management in the Fake News Era

  SERP assessment (analysis of all results) 

  Push the positive results to rank higher or create new ones: build social media profiles as they usually rank high, create content on your site and third party sites with high authority

  Create new assets on authoritative websites like: Youtube video, medium.com, industry publications.

  Mauro Fuentes (Social Media El Corte Ingles) – Relevant content

  Fight With Algorithms With Relevant Content Over Time

  Examples of reactive marketing (moment marketing): how does the brand fit in the moment (before,during and after)?

  • People want to be a part of the history, don’t want to be spectators.
  • content – storytelling, content effectiveness
  • marketing in the right moment, NOW!

  Oli Gardner – UX

  Slideshare: Content Marketing is Broken and Only Your M.O.M. Can Save You

  The presentation was packed with useful tips, highly recommended to check it out! Also, this page contains all the useful resources that Oli recommended.

  Tips for design improvements:

  • contrast
  • design
  • space
  • attention-driven design
  • test form fields
  • experiment CTA below the fold – encourage people to explore more + see more content
  • designing for the aha moment: content elements for accelerating aha moment
  • custom data = content per type
  • push data to deliver tailored content at the aha moment
  • testimonial – to be authentic, real social proof
  • authentic image, specificity
  • Oli Gardner – unbounce lps
  • download < download now (create urgency)
  • click < click here
  • data, conv. opps, test, everything is different

  Wil Reynolds – Big Data (SEO and PPC KW Analysis with Power BI)

  Slideshare: Excel is for Losers, Go Big Data or Go Home

  Instead of targeting most searched queries, target the one with less competition.

  Analysis of 10k converting keywords (KWs that converted once at least in PPC): 100 URLs per KW → analysed 8k domains in total

  Check if it’s worth to rank for those in organic/PPC as there’s less competition

  SEER – big data datahelp@seerint.com
  CTR graph deviation due to the brand affinity, no CTR curve

  I like the point that you should carefully look into the industry and your keyword movements before getting obssesed with the best practices and resources. It is true that we should follow best practices, but it is all contextual as I have always said.

  • build and process big datasets for your own case
  • different data sets pcc, GSC, SF etc.!
  • cross-reference SERP comp. analysis – different competitors, youtube,
  • pinterest, search landscape
  • Power BI – PPC + SEO + conv.

  Joanna Lord  – How to Build a Great Marketing Team

  This was one of the best marketing presentations that I have recently seen as it comes to build a strong and the right marketing team.

  Slideshare: What Makes a Great Marketing Team

  It is not enough to hire someone, how do attract, retain and grow the best people in your team? Unfortunately, many companies and teams  don’t get it right, but indeed it is not a trivial thing to do. Joanna provided useful tips from her experience and many things, which I have seen (to work or not), have been reaffirmed. I am huge fan of frameworks, glad to hear that building and following an agile roadmap + the right frameworks are the essential ingredients of the successful marketing team.

  How to build 1st class marketing organization?
  patterns – even without competition, you will fail without the right people! Yes, and this is why leaders will do their best to get and keep you in the team. In the end, you are not an employee, but a key player in the success play game.
  Build your plan based on the impact, what is expected next year!

  • Elastic Organization – I have heard for the first time of the elastic org. More info here, definitely worth checking it out.
  • best teams run fast
  • key metrics – plan 6 to 12 months = t-shaped, domain agnostic marketers
    build processes around accountability

  3 types of processes:

  • What you do – roadmap
  • When we are doing and when it is due.
  • How you do it – frameworks (Asana – pm, Trello – tasks, Nutcache)
    align – meet = finish the project.
  • Learn more about the Decision-making framework DACI, it will help yo make group decisions efficiently and effectively.
  • Always run retrospectives to build the feedback culture!
  • Invest in biz first training
  • Cross-functional squads around how we do it.
  • Cross-trainings
  • Team sharing – progress around all teams, share each Q
    = a strong POV 0 not x kw, but what is the contribution to be number 1 for X.
  • Evangelism – (resources: General assembly, MM Avinash)
  • Leaders inspire revolutionary work (charisma)
  • forcefulness / assertiveness
  • Joanna recommended this book, Executive Presence, added to my wishlist 🙂
  • resilience is essential for growth and accomplishment

  Rand Fishkin – Search Marketing Evolution

  Slideshare: Search Marketing Evolution: 2018 and Beyond

  

  • The number of clicks on organic results is still higher than Adwords!
    But organic CTR in mobile is lower due to no click searches.
  • Invest in brand
  • More authority helps earning semantic connections
  • Optimize for intent, not KWs
  • Viperchill companies dominating the results
  • brand
  • hyper niche
  • piggyback on others
  • Use barnacle SEO (on all SERP possible results)
  • Onpage SEO – 25% kw based, 75% intent based optimization.

  Shortlist for intent optimization:

  • Topical domain signals
  • Topics
  • PR and Amplification
  • real visit signals before links
  • engagement without links:
  • pogo sticking
  • brand searches
  • engagement
  • Influence searchers who don’t leave G – non-click searches
  • get in ranking results
  • compelling listings
  • Onserp SEO, reputation mgmt SEO (reviews in results)

I hope that you have enjoyed my recap as much as I did and found it useful. Looking forward to joining next year’s Inbounder 2019 :)! Any ideas, anything that you have tested, give me a shout!