Do you suffer from range anxiety?

California recently moved forward with state financing for the construction of a network of hydrogen refueling stations for fuel-cell vehicles. The California Energy Commission has granted FirstElement Fuel Inc. $27.6 million to spur expansion of a project that was initially funded by loans from Honda and Toyota–prominent fuel-cell vehicle manufacturers–totalling $13.8 million. The network will include 19 hydrogen stations throughout the state, enabling fuel-cell vehicle owners to drive from the Redwood Forest to the Mexican border without ever running short on fuel.

If you were to listen to the network’s enthusiasts, you’d be under the impression California just scaled an economic hurdle never before encountered.

Fuel-cell vehicles are revolutionary, they insist, but potential buyers, afraid they’ll be unable to find a place to refuel–a trauma they call “range anxiety”–have shied away from the purchase. Without the infrastructure to support it, network enthusiasts allege, the miracle car would never see the road. This product-infrastructure conundrum served as the justification for the multimillion dollar government intervention.

But is this problem of “range anxiety” and investor and consumer caution all that unique? 100 years ago, when the automobile itself was new to the market, wouldn’t we have seen a similar economic situation with a promising technology awaiting the infrastructure to facilitate its embrace?

IER Founder Robert Bradley’s book, Oil, Gas, and Government, comments extensively on this topic. By diving in, we’ll see that at the turn of the 20th century it wasn’t government, but the market that supplied answers to these same problems:

Early in the automobile age, gasoline sales joined those of kerosene in multipurpose establishments such as grocery stores, hardware stores, and drug stores. Even coal, lumber, and ice dealers sold gasoline as a sideline. Blacksmith shops and machine shops evolved into auto garages, which became prominent distributors of motor fuel. Typically, gasoline was stored in a large open container, and customers would fill a self-brought container, pay at the counter, and lug the gasoline home or to a car. This was self-service, but it was a slow inconvenient process for motorists. Gasoline was subject to spillage, evaporation, and the hazard of explosion or fire. Some customers circumvented these problems with tank-wagon deliveries, but storage expenses, ranging from facility construction to holding costs, made this an imperfect alternative.

What was needed was a marketing breakthrough. This came in 1910 with a new dispensing device that gauged and pumped gasoline from an enclosed container to the fuel tank through an open hose. The fuel pump eliminated earlier problems. Product loss was minimized, and underground tank storage reduced hazards. The motorist could fill up without leaving the car with little wait. Competition between retailers would ensure that.

Garages were the first to adopt the new dispensing method, and competition between sellers led to free auxiliary services such as air for tires, water for radiators, and lubrication for doors and other areas. Complaints about lackadaisical service and irregular pricing by garages were heard, however, and some motorists began frequenting bulk stations as an alternative. Bulk stations welcomed the business. With delivery expenses bypassed, quantity discounts were passed through, and bulk stations offered extra services to lure business their way. When brisk business began to interfere with regular bulk-station operations, some plants physically split the wholesale and retail functions and opened “filling stations” on the curb of the street. A new era in petroleum marketing was born.

Simultaneously with bulk-station retailing, refiners recognized opportunities to open service stations that would offer expedient service and competitive pricing. Two types of stations emerged: curbside pumps to service hurried motorists in noncongested areas and drive-in stations offering wider services to more customers with a short wait. Early drive-in stations sprang up in St. Louis (1905), Seattle (1907), Denver (1909), Dallas (1911), and Memphis and Cincinnati (1912). By 1914 the novelty of filling stations had caught on, and head-to-head competition led to efforts to improve the appearance and cleanliness of stations and their attendants. Windshield cleaning, expanded hours, credit, and in some cases coupon purchases came into use. Restrooms became a major attraction. National advertising of retail gasoline brands began. With expanded road systems and long-distance travel, brand-name identification became important to assure the motorist of standard quality. All these developments accompanied great sales and station growth. By 1920, an estimated 15,000 service stations dotted the American landscape.

The development and early operations of gasoline marketing were a market phenomenon. Consumer demand dictated the evolution of gasoline retailing from the general store to the garage to the bulk station and finally to the service stations. Government intervention was perfunctory. (Bradley, p. 1309-1311)

With gasoline, it wasn’t the power of government that created the modern, convenient network of fueling stations we frequent today, but thousands of people working to figure out a better product and service as they competed with other gasoline dispensers. Through fits and starts, with failed experiments along the way, a solution to the product-infrastructure conundrum emerged. In the absence of a top-down solution, market processes brought about an answer.

Existing gas stations seem like the logical starting point for hydrogen fill-ups, but we’ll now never know what creative ideas the market may have spit out. Hydrogen and gasoline, admittedly, are not perfect economic analogues, but that’s precisely why organic market processes would have been of value. Who’s to say consumers wouldn’t have demonstrated a preference for hydrogen stations outside of the yoga studio or next to that farmers market with the killer kombucha? By entrenching the conventional gas station paradigm, the State of California short-circuited a great opportunity for us to watch the market (and gratuitous virtue signaling) play out.

What’s more, by co-signing the loan for FirstElement Fuel Inc., the State of California has undermined prospective competition. Would you want to take the risk of opening your own hydrogen station when FirstElement Fuel has the California Energy Commission propping it up? Odds are, you wouldn’t. In the near-term this will surely give fuel-cell vehicle sales a boost, but in the long-term this intervention costs consumers by sapping creativity and competition from the marketplace.

The post Do you suffer from range anxiety? appeared first on IER.

Should SEOs and Marketers Continue to Track and Report on Keyword Rankings? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Is the practice of tracking keywords truly dying? There's been a great deal of industry discussion around the topic of late, and some key points have been made. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand speaks to the biggest challenges keyword rank tracking faces today and how to solve for them.

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

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about keyword ranking reports. There have been a few articles that have come out recently on a number of big industry sites around whether SEOs should still be tracking their keyword rankings.

I want to be clear: Moz has a little bit of a vested interest here. And so the question is: Can you actually trust me, who obviously I'm a big shareholder in Moz and I'm the founder, and so I care a lot about how Moz does as a software business. We help people track rankings. Does that mean I'm biased? I'm going to do my best not to be. So rather than saying you absolutely should track rankings, I'm instead going to address what most of these articles have brought up as the problems of rank tracking and then talk about some solutions by which you can do this.

My suspicion is you should probably be rank tracking. I think that if you turn it off and you don't do it, it's very hard to get a lot of the value that we need as SEOs, a lot of the intelligence. It's true there are challenges with keyword ranking reports, but not true enough to avoid doing it entirely. We still get too much value from them.

The case against — and solutions for — keyword ranking data

A. People, places, and things

So let's start with the case against keyword ranking data. First off, "keyword ranking reports are inaccurate." There's personalization, localization, and device type, and that biases and has removed what is the "one true ranking." We've done a bunch of analyses of these, and this is absolutely the case.

Personalization, turns out, doesn't change ranking that much on average. For an individual it can change rankings dramatically. If they visited your website before, they could be historically biased to you. Or if they visited your competitor's, they could be biased. Their previous search history might have biased them in a single session, those kinds of things. But with the removal of Google+ from search results, personalization is actually not as dramatically changing as it used to be. Localization, though, still huge, absolutely, and device differences, still huge.

Solution

But we can address this, and the way to do that is by tracking these things separately. So here you can see I've got a ranking report that shows me my mobile rankings versus my desktop rankings. I think this is absolutely essential. Especially if you're getting a lot of traffic from both mobile and desktop search, you need to be tracking those separately. Super smart. Of course we should do that.

We can do the same thing on the local side as well. So I can say, "Here, look. This is how I rank in Seattle. Here's how I rank in Minneapolis. Here's how I rank in the U.S. with no geographic personalization," if Google were to do that. Those types of rankings can also be pretty good.

It is true that local ranked tracking has gotten a little more challenging, but we've seen that folks like, well Moz itself, but folks like STAT (GetStat), SERPs.com, Search Metrics, they have all adjusted their rank tracking methodologies in order to have accurate local rank tracking. It's pretty good. Same with device type, pretty darn good.

B. Keyword value estimation

Another big problem that is expressed by a number of folks here is we no longer know how much traffic an individual keyword sends. Because we don't know how much an individual keyword sends, we can't really say, "What's the value of ranking for that keyword?" Therefore, why bother to even track keyword rankings?

I think this is a little bit of spurious logic. The leap there doesn't quite make sense to me. But I will say this. If you don't know which keywords are sending you traffic specifically, you still know which pages are receiving search traffic. That is reported. You can get it in your Google Analytics, your Omniture report, whatever you're using, and then you can tie that back to keyword ranking reports showing which pages are receiving traffic from which keywords.

Most all of the ranked tracking platforms, Moz included, has a report that shows you something like this. It says, "Here are the keywords that we believe are likely to have sent these percentages of traffic to this page based on the keywords that you're tracking, based on the pages that are ranking for them, and how much search traffic those pages receive."

Solution

So let's track that. We can look at pages receiving visits from search, and we can look at which keywords they rank for. Then we can tie those together, which gives us the ability to then make not only a report like this, but a report that estimates the value contributed by content and by pages rather than by individual keywords.

In a lot of ways, this is almost superior to our previous methodology of tracking by keyword. Keyword can still be estimated through AdWords, through paid search, but this can be estimated on a content basis, which means you get credit for how much value the page has created, based on all the search traffic that's flowed to it, and where that's at in your attribution lifecycle of people visiting those pages.

C. Tracking rankings and keyword relevancy

Pages often rank for keywords that they aren't specifically targeting, because Google has gotten way better with user intent. So it can be hard or even impossible to track those rankings, because we don't know what to look for.

Well, okay, I hear you. That is a challenge. This means basically what we have to do is broaden the set of keywords that we look at and deal with the fact that we're going to have to do sampling. We can't track every possible keyword, unless you have a crazy budget, in which case go talk to Rob Bucci up at STAT, and he will set you up with a huge campaign to track all your millions of keywords.

Solution

If you have a smaller budget, what you have to do is sample, and you sample by sets of keywords. Like these are my high conversion keywords — I'm going to assume I have a flower delivery business — so flower delivery and floral gifts and flower arrangements for offices. My long tail keywords, like artisan rose varieties and floral alternatives for special occasions, and my branded keywords, like Rand's Flowers or Flowers by Rand.

I can create a bunch of different buckets like this, sample the keywords that are in them, and then I can track each of these separately. Now I can see, ah, these are sets of keywords where I've generally been moving up and receiving more traffic. These are sets of keywords where I've generally been moving down. These are sets of keywords that perform better or worse on mobile or desktop, or better or worse in these geographic areas. Right now I can really start to get true intelligence from there.

Don't let your keyword targeting — your keyword targeting meaning what keywords you're targeting on which pages — determine what you rank track. Don't let it do that exclusively. Sure, go ahead and take that list and put that in there, but then also do some more expansive keyword research to find those broad sets of search terms and phrases that you should be monitoring. Now we can really solve this issue.

D. Keyword rank tracking with a purpose

This one I think is a pretty insidious problem. But for many organizations ranking reports are more of a historical artifact. We're not tracking them for a particular reason. We're tracking them because that's what we've always tracked and/or because we think we're supposed to track them. Those are terrible reasons to track things. You should be looking for reasons of real value and actionability. Let's give some examples here.

Solution

What I want you to do is identify the goals of rank tracking first, like: What do I want to solve? What would I do differently based on whether this data came back to me in one way or another?

If you don't have a great answer to that question, definitely don't bother tracking that thing. That should be the rule of all analytics.

So if your goal is to say, "Hey, I want to be able to attribute a search traffic gain or a search traffic loss to what I've done on my site or what Google has changed out there," that is crucially important. I think that's core to SEO. If you don't have that, I'm not sure how we can possibly do our jobs.

We attribute search traffic gains and losses by tracking broadly, a broad enough set of keywords, hopefully in enough buckets, to be able to get a good sample set; by tracking the pages that receive that traffic so we can see if a page goes way down in its search visits. We can look at, "Oh, what was that page ranking for? Oh, it was ranking for these keywords. Oh, they dropped." Or, "No, they didn't drop. But you know what? We looked in Google Trends, and the traffic demand for those keywords dropped," and so we know that this is a seasonality thing, or a fluctuation in demand, or those types of things.

And we can track by geography and device, so that we can say, "Hey, we lost a bunch of traffic. Oh, we're no longer mobile-friendly." That is a problem. Or, "Hey, we're tracking and, hey, we're no longer ranking in this geography. Oh, that's because these two competitors came in and they took over that market from us."

We could look at would be something like identify pages that are in need of work, but they only require a small amount of work to have a big change in traffic. So we could do things like track pages that rank on page two for given keywords. If we have a bunch of those, we can say, "Hey, maybe just a few on-page tweaks, a few links to these pages, and we could move up substantially." We had a Whiteboard Friday where we talked about how you could do that with internal linking previously and have seen some remarkable results there.

We can track keywords that rank in position four to seven on average. Those are your big wins, because if you can move up from position four, five, six, seven to one, two, three, you can double or triple your search traffic that you're receiving from keywords like that.

You should also track long tail, untargeted keywords. If you've got a long tail bucket, like we've got up here, I can then say, "Aha, I don't have a page that's even targeting any of these keywords. I should make one. I could probably rank very easily because I have an authoritative website and some good content," and that's really all you might need.

We might look at some up-and-coming competitors. I want to track who's in my space, who might be creeping up there. So I should track the most common domains that rank on page one or two across my keyword sets.

I can track specific competitors. I might say, "Hey, Joel's Flower Delivery Service looks like it's doing really well. I'm going to set them up as a competitor, and I'm going to track their rankings specifically, or I'm going to see..." You could use something like SEMrush and see specifically: What are all the keywords they rank for that you don't rank for?

This type of data, in my view, is still tremendously important to SEO, no matter what platform you're using. But if you're having these problems or if these problems are being expressed to you, now you have some solutions.

I look forward to your comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Should SEOs and Marketers Continue to Track and Report on Keyword Rankings? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Is the practice of tracking keywords truly dying? There's been a great deal of industry discussion around the topic of late, and some key points have been made. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand speaks to the biggest challenges keyword rank tracking faces today and how to solve for them.

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

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about keyword ranking reports. There have been a few articles that have come out recently on a number of big industry sites around whether SEOs should still be tracking their keyword rankings.

I want to be clear: Moz has a little bit of a vested interest here. And so the question is: Can you actually trust me, who obviously I'm a big shareholder in Moz and I'm the founder, and so I care a lot about how Moz does as a software business. We help people track rankings. Does that mean I'm biased? I'm going to do my best not to be. So rather than saying you absolutely should track rankings, I'm instead going to address what most of these articles have brought up as the problems of rank tracking and then talk about some solutions by which you can do this.

My suspicion is you should probably be rank tracking. I think that if you turn it off and you don't do it, it's very hard to get a lot of the value that we need as SEOs, a lot of the intelligence. It's true there are challenges with keyword ranking reports, but not true enough to avoid doing it entirely. We still get too much value from them.

The case against — and solutions for — keyword ranking data

A. People, places, and things

So let's start with the case against keyword ranking data. First off, "keyword ranking reports are inaccurate." There's personalization, localization, and device type, and that biases and has removed what is the "one true ranking." We've done a bunch of analyses of these, and this is absolutely the case.

Personalization, turns out, doesn't change ranking that much on average. For an individual it can change rankings dramatically. If they visited your website before, they could be historically biased to you. Or if they visited your competitor's, they could be biased. Their previous search history might have biased them in a single session, those kinds of things. But with the removal of Google+ from search results, personalization is actually not as dramatically changing as it used to be. Localization, though, still huge, absolutely, and device differences, still huge.

Solution

But we can address this, and the way to do that is by tracking these things separately. So here you can see I've got a ranking report that shows me my mobile rankings versus my desktop rankings. I think this is absolutely essential. Especially if you're getting a lot of traffic from both mobile and desktop search, you need to be tracking those separately. Super smart. Of course we should do that.

We can do the same thing on the local side as well. So I can say, "Here, look. This is how I rank in Seattle. Here's how I rank in Minneapolis. Here's how I rank in the U.S. with no geographic personalization," if Google were to do that. Those types of rankings can also be pretty good.

It is true that local ranked tracking has gotten a little more challenging, but we've seen that folks like, well Moz itself, but folks like STAT (GetStat), SERPs.com, Search Metrics, they have all adjusted their rank tracking methodologies in order to have accurate local rank tracking. It's pretty good. Same with device type, pretty darn good.

B. Keyword value estimation

Another big problem that is expressed by a number of folks here is we no longer know how much traffic an individual keyword sends. Because we don't know how much an individual keyword sends, we can't really say, "What's the value of ranking for that keyword?" Therefore, why bother to even track keyword rankings?

I think this is a little bit of spurious logic. The leap there doesn't quite make sense to me. But I will say this. If you don't know which keywords are sending you traffic specifically, you still know which pages are receiving search traffic. That is reported. You can get it in your Google Analytics, your Omniture report, whatever you're using, and then you can tie that back to keyword ranking reports showing which pages are receiving traffic from which keywords.

Most all of the ranked tracking platforms, Moz included, has a report that shows you something like this. It says, "Here are the keywords that we believe are likely to have sent these percentages of traffic to this page based on the keywords that you're tracking, based on the pages that are ranking for them, and how much search traffic those pages receive."

Solution

So let's track that. We can look at pages receiving visits from search, and we can look at which keywords they rank for. Then we can tie those together, which gives us the ability to then make not only a report like this, but a report that estimates the value contributed by content and by pages rather than by individual keywords.

In a lot of ways, this is almost superior to our previous methodology of tracking by keyword. Keyword can still be estimated through AdWords, through paid search, but this can be estimated on a content basis, which means you get credit for how much value the page has created, based on all the search traffic that's flowed to it, and where that's at in your attribution lifecycle of people visiting those pages.

C. Tracking rankings and keyword relevancy

Pages often rank for keywords that they aren't specifically targeting, because Google has gotten way better with user intent. So it can be hard or even impossible to track those rankings, because we don't know what to look for.

Well, okay, I hear you. That is a challenge. This means basically what we have to do is broaden the set of keywords that we look at and deal with the fact that we're going to have to do sampling. We can't track every possible keyword, unless you have a crazy budget, in which case go talk to Rob Bucci up at STAT, and he will set you up with a huge campaign to track all your millions of keywords.

Solution

If you have a smaller budget, what you have to do is sample, and you sample by sets of keywords. Like these are my high conversion keywords — I'm going to assume I have a flower delivery business — so flower delivery and floral gifts and flower arrangements for offices. My long tail keywords, like artisan rose varieties and floral alternatives for special occasions, and my branded keywords, like Rand's Flowers or Flowers by Rand.

I can create a bunch of different buckets like this, sample the keywords that are in them, and then I can track each of these separately. Now I can see, ah, these are sets of keywords where I've generally been moving up and receiving more traffic. These are sets of keywords where I've generally been moving down. These are sets of keywords that perform better or worse on mobile or desktop, or better or worse in these geographic areas. Right now I can really start to get true intelligence from there.

Don't let your keyword targeting — your keyword targeting meaning what keywords you're targeting on which pages — determine what you rank track. Don't let it do that exclusively. Sure, go ahead and take that list and put that in there, but then also do some more expansive keyword research to find those broad sets of search terms and phrases that you should be monitoring. Now we can really solve this issue.

D. Keyword rank tracking with a purpose

This one I think is a pretty insidious problem. But for many organizations ranking reports are more of a historical artifact. We're not tracking them for a particular reason. We're tracking them because that's what we've always tracked and/or because we think we're supposed to track them. Those are terrible reasons to track things. You should be looking for reasons of real value and actionability. Let's give some examples here.

Solution

What I want you to do is identify the goals of rank tracking first, like: What do I want to solve? What would I do differently based on whether this data came back to me in one way or another?

If you don't have a great answer to that question, definitely don't bother tracking that thing. That should be the rule of all analytics.

So if your goal is to say, "Hey, I want to be able to attribute a search traffic gain or a search traffic loss to what I've done on my site or what Google has changed out there," that is crucially important. I think that's core to SEO. If you don't have that, I'm not sure how we can possibly do our jobs.

We attribute search traffic gains and losses by tracking broadly, a broad enough set of keywords, hopefully in enough buckets, to be able to get a good sample set; by tracking the pages that receive that traffic so we can see if a page goes way down in its search visits. We can look at, "Oh, what was that page ranking for? Oh, it was ranking for these keywords. Oh, they dropped." Or, "No, they didn't drop. But you know what? We looked in Google Trends, and the traffic demand for those keywords dropped," and so we know that this is a seasonality thing, or a fluctuation in demand, or those types of things.

And we can track by geography and device, so that we can say, "Hey, we lost a bunch of traffic. Oh, we're no longer mobile-friendly." That is a problem. Or, "Hey, we're tracking and, hey, we're no longer ranking in this geography. Oh, that's because these two competitors came in and they took over that market from us."

We could look at would be something like identify pages that are in need of work, but they only require a small amount of work to have a big change in traffic. So we could do things like track pages that rank on page two for given keywords. If we have a bunch of those, we can say, "Hey, maybe just a few on-page tweaks, a few links to these pages, and we could move up substantially." We had a Whiteboard Friday where we talked about how you could do that with internal linking previously and have seen some remarkable results there.

We can track keywords that rank in position four to seven on average. Those are your big wins, because if you can move up from position four, five, six, seven to one, two, three, you can double or triple your search traffic that you're receiving from keywords like that.

You should also track long tail, untargeted keywords. If you've got a long tail bucket, like we've got up here, I can then say, "Aha, I don't have a page that's even targeting any of these keywords. I should make one. I could probably rank very easily because I have an authoritative website and some good content," and that's really all you might need.

We might look at some up-and-coming competitors. I want to track who's in my space, who might be creeping up there. So I should track the most common domains that rank on page one or two across my keyword sets.

I can track specific competitors. I might say, "Hey, Joel's Flower Delivery Service looks like it's doing really well. I'm going to set them up as a competitor, and I'm going to track their rankings specifically, or I'm going to see..." You could use something like SEMrush and see specifically: What are all the keywords they rank for that you don't rank for?

This type of data, in my view, is still tremendously important to SEO, no matter what platform you're using. But if you're having these problems or if these problems are being expressed to you, now you have some solutions.

I look forward to your comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

SEI Alumni Highlight: Derek Mast – Commitment to Continuing Education

Derek Mast, a foreman for a large, multi-state solar company. Derek has been in the solar industry for a year and a half and before joining the solar industry, Derek was an electrician for six years. He is one of several dozen employees his company has sent to SEI for training. They put all new hires through SEI’s introductory class and some employees, through more advanced solar training. Derek joined SEI for PV 351L, a hands-on lab class covering tools and techniques for operation and maintenance of PV systems. The course is advanced training designed for solar professionals like Derek, who are already working in the PV industry who want to take their technical skills to the next level ­and gain hands-­on experience with a wide range of advanced analytical tools and meters.

While Derek is an experienced electrician, he speaks to the need for training for everyone getting into the field. For himself, though he came from a strong technical background, he emphasizes the amount of knowledge and experience he needed to assimilate in order to fully understand the DC side of systems. And for anyone new to the field, he said “There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know that you don’t know you don’t know. Just getting some base level education is important. There’s a lot that can go wrong when you’re wiring up a solar system. And knowing how to install things well, figuring out what best practices and why they’re best practices is important as you’re learning your field.“

And why did his company send people to SEI for solar Installer training:  “My company really values bringing their students a lot of education through SEI”. He added that training really adds to the company’s overall effectiveness, increasing their reliability and diagnostic ability. While he definitely believes in on the job training Derek said “I can teach people on the job but I’m going to miss stuff that the course will take them through.”He added that he really appreciated the shared experience of instructors who have been in the field for such a long time who can speak to scenarios and systems that you encounter much but will eventually need to in your career. But even for his co-workers that are not directly involved installs, Derek emphasized that “my company puts everyone through PV101 online. It just gives so much context to everyone, even if they’re in accounting… It really helps communication within the company.”

Derek is enjoying his transition into solar, intrigued by all he is learning and the quickly advancing technology in the industry. He is quick to share his knowledge with his crew and excited to encourage everyone in the field to continue to learn and evolve with industry.

The post SEI Alumni Highlight: Derek Mast – Commitment to Continuing Education appeared first on Solar Training - Solar Installer Training - Solar PV Installation Training - Solar Energy Courses - Renewable Energy Education - NABCEP - Solar Energy International (SEI).

Solar Installer Training Alumni Highlight: Jessica Wagner

 

Jessica Wagner – Bringing New Energy to a Historic Organization

As an applicant in SEI Solar Professionals Certificate Program, Jessica Wagner has been at SEI’s Training Facility in Paonia, Colorado for 6 weeks and she has impressed everyone with her passion and journey to get here. From the initial classes in Grid-Direct Design and Installation to the Advanced Multi-Mode Systems and energy storage technology, Jess has been engaged and diligent in her coursework and future career in the solar industry. Her interest in solar energy began early, intrigued by the PV modules atop her grandmother’s home, and leading to a third grade paper passionately declaring her intent to become an electrical engineer so she could install solar when she grew up. In fact, Jess did begin school to become an electrical engineer but there were some twists and turns in her journey to become a solar installer.

Sixteen years later, Jess is the mother of three children, living in Metamora, Illinois and bartending at the American Legion Post 1115. It was her job at the American Legion, among other things, that became a major impetus for her to begin her solar installer training. Jess witnessed daily the struggles for the Legion Post to stay open, their membership declined over the years while their expenses kept rising.

She began researching grants to help the legion and quickly found funding sources that utilized solar energy and the associated energy savings to support veterans programs. She knew this was a chance to make a lasting impact for the veterans she’d befriended at the Legion and to revive her long latent passion for solar energy. By beginning solar training, Jess could start a new career and work toward installing a PV system at the Legion, both to reduce their utility costs and (literally) bring some new energy to the organization.

Her choice of solar installer training provider was clear. Jess had been following SEI since 1998 and she didn’t hesitate to enroll. Her mother came from Florida to help care for her children while she travelled to SEI. Asked of her experience jumping into technical training after such a long break she said “I have a bit of an electrical/technical background, but SEI really meets you where you’re at. If you pay attention, you’ll get the knowledge that you need.” She added that she was thankful for the small class sizes and individualized attention as opposed to the huge “solar seminars” for 300 people she’d seen offered by other training providers. “The instructors are totally willing to stay after class to explain something in more detail or go over something in a different way to make sure you understand.” And of her instructors “the instructors are so knowledgeable… I’ve never seen teachers that are so qualified. They’ve been doing [solar] for years. They are in the field. This is their career.”

It was not only the instructors but the lab setting and small town location that drew her to Solar Energy International. About Paonia, Jess fervently recounts “I love it here! It’s a beautiful setting and there’s lots to do. It’s a mellow town where I can focus on my classwork and still go out in the evenings. Being in Paonia makes the learning experience really laid back.” Furthermore she’s had time to get to know her classmates, many of whom are also enrolled in the Solar Professionals Certificate Program. Though they are all enrolled in the same program, they are all coming from different backgrounds and places of experience. The classes and lab experience really allow them to share their knowledge on a peer level, where everyone can share their experience in construction, of previous solar installs, etc, in a really relatable way. Congratulations to Jess and fellow Certificate Track classmates and best of luck on the rest of your solar journeys.

The post Solar Installer Training Alumni Highlight: Jessica Wagner appeared first on Solar Training - Solar Installer Training - Solar PV Installation Training - Solar Energy Courses - Renewable Energy Education - NABCEP - Solar Energy International (SEI).

SEI Solar Training Instructor Spotlight: Laura Conchelos

SEI Welcomes New Instructor: Laura Conchelos

SEI Alumni Laura Conchelos recently came back to Solar Energy International (SEI), this time as an instructor. Prior Laura to coming to SEI, Laura spent seven years doing seasonal construction work where gained some experience with solar electric systems while working on off-grid cabins in New Hampshire. Her experience is like the many others who come from a construction background, bringing the many transferable skills when they make their career transition or expansion into the solar industry.  

It was a coworker in her former job that recommended SEI to Laura which eventually led to her enrollment in SEI’s solar PV training program. After she’d gotten a solid framework, it was SEI’s alumni and industry network that helped Laura land a job.

“My first job in the solar industry was in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Kathy Swartz (Executive Director of SEI) gave me the idea of the company to apply to. I did and spent the next three and a half years working there doing mostly grid-tied installations with a  with a number of other installers who had also been trained by SEI”

Being on an install crew where everyone had received solar installation training made a huge difference in the quality of the work say Laura “The company I worked for was really focused on training, on bringing people in slowly and giving people a really well-rounded experience. We got training on the job but the installers and designers we had that had been trained previously came with a good solid background and definitely knew their way around the roof and and around tolls and also were very familiar with the safety protocols involved in working with solar.”

Laura has recently moved back to Colorado working as a NABCEP Certified Installer and teaching at SEI. Her experience with a company that emphasizes training had a marked impact on her commitment to ongoing education in the industry. “Even though I’ve I’ve been in the industry for a few years now I definitely think it’s important to keep taking training and finding out what’s new in the industry. And there’s a requirement for training when you’re NABCEP Certified to take a certain number of hours of training to recertify. Regardless of the certification however it’s important to keep up with changes in the industry and the National Electric Code and training is a good way to do that.”

 

SEI is proud to welcome Laura to the team. She just completed her first teaching job instructing PV101:Solar Electric Design & Installation (Grid-Direct)  and PV201L: Solar Electric Lab Week (Grid-Direct).

The post SEI Solar Training Instructor Spotlight: Laura Conchelos appeared first on Solar Training - Solar Installer Training - Solar PV Installation Training - Solar Energy Courses - Renewable Energy Education - NABCEP - Solar Energy International (SEI).

Case Study: How We Created Controversial Content That Earned Hundreds of Links

Posted by KelseyLibert

Content marketers, does the following scenario sound familiar?

You’re tasked with creating content that attracts publicity, links, and social shares. You come up with great ideas for content that you’re confident could accomplish these goals. However, any ideas that push the envelope or might offend anyone in the slightest get shot down by your boss or client. Even if a provocative idea gets approved, after feedback from higher-ups and several rounds of editing, you end up with a boring, watered-down version of what you originally envisioned.

Given the above, you're not surprised when you achieve lackluster results. Repeat this cycle enough times, and it may lead to the false assumption that content marketing doesn’t work for the brand.

In this post, I’ll answer two questions:

1. How can I get my boss or clients to sign off on envelope-pushing content that will attract the attention needed to achieve great results?
2. How can we minimize the risk of backlash?

Why controversy is so powerful for content marketing

To get big results, content needs to get people talking. Often times, the best way to do this is by creating an emotional reaction in the audience. Content that deals with a controversial or polarizing topic can be a surefire way to accomplish this.

On the other hand, when you play it too safe with your content, it becomes extremely difficult to ignite the emotional response needed to drive social sharing. Ultimately, you don't attract the attention needed to earn high-quality links.

Below is a peek at the promotions report from a recent controversial campaign that resulted in a lot of high-quality links, among other benefits.

Overcoming a client’s aversion to controversy

We understand and respect a client’s fierce dedication to protecting their brand. The thought of attaching their company to anything controversial can set off worst-case-scenario visions of an angry Internet mob and bad press (which isn’t always a terrible thing).

One such example of balancing a sensitive topic while minimizing the potential risk is a recent campaign we created for apartment listing site Abodo. Our idea was to use Twitter data to pinpoint which states and cities had the highest concentration of prejudiced and tolerant tweets. Bigotry in America is an extremely sensitive topic, yet our client was open to the idea.

Want to get a contentious idea approved by your boss or client? Here’s how we did it.

1. Your idea needs to be relevant to the brand, either directly or tangentially.

Controversy for the sake of controversy is not going to provide value to the brand or the target audience.

I asked Michael Taus, VP of Growth and Business Development at Abodo, why our campaign idea got the green light. He said Abodo’s mission is to help people find a home, not to influence political discourse. But they also believe that when you're moving to a new community, there's more to the decision than what your house or apartment looks like, including understanding the social and cultural tone of the location.

So while the campaign dealt with a hot topic, ultimately this information would be valuable to Abodo’s users.

2. Prove that playing it safe isn’t working.

If your “safe” content is struggling to get attention, make the case for taking a risk. Previous campaign topics for our client had been too conservative. We knew by creating something worth talking about, we’d see greater results.

3. Put safeguards in place for minimizing risk to the brand.

While we couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be a negative response once the campaign launched, we could guarantee that we’d do everything in our power to minimize any potential backlash. We were confident in our ability to protect our client because we’d done it so many times with other campaigns. I’ll walk you through how to do this throughout the rest of the post.

On the client’s end, they can get approval from other internal departments; for example, having the legal and PR teams review and give final approval can help mitigate the uncertainty around running a controversial campaign.

Did taking a risk pay off?

The campaign was a big success, with results including:

• More than 620 placements (240 dofollow links and 280 co-citation links)
• Features on high-authority sites including CNET, Slate, Business Insider, AOL, Yahoo, Mic, The Daily Beast, and Adweek
• More than 67,000 social shares
• A whole lot of discussion

Beyond these metrics, Abodo has seen additional benefits such as partnership opportunities. Since this campaign launched, they were approached by a nonprofit organization to collaborate on a similar type of piece. They hope to repeat their success by leveraging the nonprofit’s substantial audience and PR capabilities.

Essential tips for minimizing risk around contentious content

We find that good journalism practices can greatly reduce the risk of a negative response. Keep the following five things in mind when creating attention-grabbing content.

1. Presenting data vs. taking a stance: Let the data speak

Rather than presenting an opinion, just present the facts. Our clients are usually fine with controversial topics as long as we don't take a stance on them and instead allow the data we’ve collected to tell the story for us. Facts are facts, and that's all your content needs to offer.

If publishers want to put their own spin on the facts you present or audiences see the story the data are telling and want to respond, the conversation can be opened up and generate a lot of engagement.

For the Abodo campaign, the data we presented weren’t a direct reflection of our client but rather came from an outside source (Twitter). We packaged the campaign on a landing page on the client’s site, which includes the design assets and an objective summary of the data.

The publishers then chose how to cover the data we provided, and the discussion took off from there. For example, Slate called out Louisiana’s unfortunate achievement of having the most derogatory tweets.

2. Present more than one side of the story

How do you feel when you watch a news report or documentary that only shares one side of the story? It takes away credibility from the reporting, doesn’t it?

To keep the campaign topic from being too negative and one-sided, we looked at the most prejudiced and least prejudiced tweets. Including states and cities with the least derogatory tweets added a positive angle to the story. This made the data more objective, which improved the campaign’s credibility.

Regional publishers showed off that their state had the nicest tweets.

And residents of these places were proud to share the news.

Pleased WI was one of the top-10 least nasty places for pejorative tweets! Stay away from Louisiana. https://t.co/ijoAMsmKao
— Sam Million-Weaver (@millionweaver) March 9, 2016

If your campaign topic is negative, try to show the positive side of it too. This keeps the content from being a total downer, which is important for social sharing since people usually want to pass along content that will make others feel good. Our recent study on the emotions behind viral content found that even when viral content evokes negative emotions, it’s usually not purely negative; the content also makes the audience feel a positive emotion or surprise.

Aside from objective reporting, a huge benefit to telling more than one side of the story is that you’re able to pitch the story for multiple angles, thus maximizing your potential coverage. Because of this, we ended up creating 18 visual assets for this campaign, which is far more than we typically do.

3. Don’t go in with an agenda

Be careful of twisting the data to fit your agenda. It's okay to have a thesis when you start, but if your aim is to tell a certain story you’re apt to stick with that storyline regardless of what the data show. If your information is clearly slanted to show the story you want to tell, the audience will catch on, and you'll get called out.

Instead of gathering research with an intent of "I'm setting out to prove XYZ," adopt a mindset of "I wonder what the reality is."

4. Be transparent about your methodology

You don’t want the validity of your data to become a point of contention among publishers and readers. This goes for any data-heavy campaign but especially for controversial data.

To combat any doubts around where the information came from or how the data were collected and analyzed, we publish a detailed methodology alongside all of our campaigns. For the Abodo campaign, we created a PDF document of the research methodology which we could easily share with publishers.

Include the following in your campaign’s methodology:

• Where and when you received your data.
• What kind and how much data you collected. (Our methodology went on to list exactly which terms we searched for on Twitter.)
• Any exceptions within your collection and analysis, such as omitted information.
• A list of additional sources. (We only use reputable, new sources ideally published within the last year.)

For even more transparency, make your raw data available. This gives publishers a chance to comb through the data to find additional story angles.

5. Don’t feed the trolls

This is true for any content campaign, but it’s especially important to have an error-free campaign when dealing with a sensitive topic since it may be under more scrutiny. Don’t let mistakes in the content become the real controversy.

Build multiple phases of editing into your production process to ensure you’re not releasing inaccurate or low-quality content. Keep these processes consistent by creating a set of editorial guidelines that everyone involved can follow.

We put our campaigns through fact checking and several rounds of quality assurance.

Fact checking should play a complementary role to research and involves verifying accuracy by making sure all data and assertions are true. Every point in the content should have a source that can be verified. Writers should be familiar with best practices for making their work easy to fact-check; this fact-checking guide from Poynter is a good resource.

Quality assurance looks at both the textual and design elements of a campaign to ensure a good user experience. Our QA team reviews things like grammar, clarity (Is this text clearly making a point? Is a design element confusing or hard to read?), and layout/organization.

Include other share-worthy elements

Although the controversial subject matter helped this campaign gain attention, we also incorporated other proven elements of highly shareable content:

• Geographic angle. People wanted to see how their state or city ranked. Many took to social media to express their disappointment or pride in the results.
• Timeliness. Bigotry is a hot-button issue in the U.S. right now amidst racial tension and a heated political situation.
• Comparison. Rankings and comparisons stimulate discussion, especially when people have strong opinions about the rankings.
• Surprising. The results were somewhat shocking since some cities and states which ranked “most PC” or “most prejudiced” were unexpected.

The more share-worthy elements you can tack onto your content, the greater your chances for success.

Have you seen success with controversial or polarizing content? Did you overcome a client’s objection to controversy? Be sure to share your experience in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Case Study: How We Created Controversial Content That Earned Hundreds of Links

Posted by KelseyLibert

Content marketers, does the following scenario sound familiar?

You’re tasked with creating content that attracts publicity, links, and social shares. You come up with great ideas for content that you’re confident could accomplish these goals. However, any ideas that push the envelope or might offend anyone in the slightest get shot down by your boss or client. Even if a provocative idea gets approved, after feedback from higher-ups and several rounds of editing, you end up with a boring, watered-down version of what you originally envisioned.

Given the above, you're not surprised when you achieve lackluster results. Repeat this cycle enough times, and it may lead to the false assumption that content marketing doesn’t work for the brand.

In this post, I’ll answer two questions:

1. How can I get my boss or clients to sign off on envelope-pushing content that will attract the attention needed to achieve great results?
2. How can we minimize the risk of backlash?

Why controversy is so powerful for content marketing

To get big results, content needs to get people talking. Often times, the best way to do this is by creating an emotional reaction in the audience. Content that deals with a controversial or polarizing topic can be a surefire way to accomplish this.

On the other hand, when you play it too safe with your content, it becomes extremely difficult to ignite the emotional response needed to drive social sharing. Ultimately, you don't attract the attention needed to earn high-quality links.

Below is a peek at the promotions report from a recent controversial campaign that resulted in a lot of high-quality links, among other benefits.

Overcoming a client’s aversion to controversy

We understand and respect a client’s fierce dedication to protecting their brand. The thought of attaching their company to anything controversial can set off worst-case-scenario visions of an angry Internet mob and bad press (which isn’t always a terrible thing).

One such example of balancing a sensitive topic while minimizing the potential risk is a recent campaign we created for apartment listing site Abodo. Our idea was to use Twitter data to pinpoint which states and cities had the highest concentration of prejudiced and tolerant tweets. Bigotry in America is an extremely sensitive topic, yet our client was open to the idea.

Want to get a contentious idea approved by your boss or client? Here’s how we did it.

1. Your idea needs to be relevant to the brand, either directly or tangentially.

Controversy for the sake of controversy is not going to provide value to the brand or the target audience.

I asked Michael Taus, VP of Growth and Business Development at Abodo, why our campaign idea got the green light. He said Abodo’s mission is to help people find a home, not to influence political discourse. But they also believe that when you're moving to a new community, there's more to the decision than what your house or apartment looks like, including understanding the social and cultural tone of the location.

So while the campaign dealt with a hot topic, ultimately this information would be valuable to Abodo’s users.

2. Prove that playing it safe isn’t working.

If your “safe” content is struggling to get attention, make the case for taking a risk. Previous campaign topics for our client had been too conservative. We knew by creating something worth talking about, we’d see greater results.

3. Put safeguards in place for minimizing risk to the brand.

While we couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be a negative response once the campaign launched, we could guarantee that we’d do everything in our power to minimize any potential backlash. We were confident in our ability to protect our client because we’d done it so many times with other campaigns. I’ll walk you through how to do this throughout the rest of the post.

On the client’s end, they can get approval from other internal departments; for example, having the legal and PR teams review and give final approval can help mitigate the uncertainty around running a controversial campaign.

Did taking a risk pay off?

The campaign was a big success, with results including:

• More than 620 placements (240 dofollow links and 280 co-citation links)
• Features on high-authority sites including CNET, Slate, Business Insider, AOL, Yahoo, Mic, The Daily Beast, and Adweek
• More than 67,000 social shares
• A whole lot of discussion

Beyond these metrics, Abodo has seen additional benefits such as partnership opportunities. Since this campaign launched, they were approached by a nonprofit organization to collaborate on a similar type of piece. They hope to repeat their success by leveraging the nonprofit’s substantial audience and PR capabilities.

Essential tips for minimizing risk around contentious content

We find that good journalism practices can greatly reduce the risk of a negative response. Keep the following five things in mind when creating attention-grabbing content.

1. Presenting data vs. taking a stance: Let the data speak

Rather than presenting an opinion, just present the facts. Our clients are usually fine with controversial topics as long as we don't take a stance on them and instead allow the data we’ve collected to tell the story for us. Facts are facts, and that's all your content needs to offer.

If publishers want to put their own spin on the facts you present or audiences see the story the data are telling and want to respond, the conversation can be opened up and generate a lot of engagement.

For the Abodo campaign, the data we presented weren’t a direct reflection of our client but rather came from an outside source (Twitter). We packaged the campaign on a landing page on the client’s site, which includes the design assets and an objective summary of the data.

The publishers then chose how to cover the data we provided, and the discussion took off from there. For example, Slate called out Louisiana’s unfortunate achievement of having the most derogatory tweets.

2. Present more than one side of the story

How do you feel when you watch a news report or documentary that only shares one side of the story? It takes away credibility from the reporting, doesn’t it?

To keep the campaign topic from being too negative and one-sided, we looked at the most prejudiced and least prejudiced tweets. Including states and cities with the least derogatory tweets added a positive angle to the story. This made the data more objective, which improved the campaign’s credibility.

Regional publishers showed off that their state had the nicest tweets.

And residents of these places were proud to share the news.

Pleased WI was one of the top-10 least nasty places for pejorative tweets! Stay away from Louisiana. https://t.co/ijoAMsmKao
— Sam Million-Weaver (@millionweaver) March 9, 2016

If your campaign topic is negative, try to show the positive side of it too. This keeps the content from being a total downer, which is important for social sharing since people usually want to pass along content that will make others feel good. Our recent study on the emotions behind viral content found that even when viral content evokes negative emotions, it’s usually not purely negative; the content also makes the audience feel a positive emotion or surprise.

Aside from objective reporting, a huge benefit to telling more than one side of the story is that you’re able to pitch the story for multiple angles, thus maximizing your potential coverage. Because of this, we ended up creating 18 visual assets for this campaign, which is far more than we typically do.

3. Don’t go in with an agenda

Be careful of twisting the data to fit your agenda. It's okay to have a thesis when you start, but if your aim is to tell a certain story you’re apt to stick with that storyline regardless of what the data show. If your information is clearly slanted to show the story you want to tell, the audience will catch on, and you'll get called out.

Instead of gathering research with an intent of "I'm setting out to prove XYZ," adopt a mindset of "I wonder what the reality is."

4. Be transparent about your methodology

You don’t want the validity of your data to become a point of contention among publishers and readers. This goes for any data-heavy campaign but especially for controversial data.

To combat any doubts around where the information came from or how the data were collected and analyzed, we publish a detailed methodology alongside all of our campaigns. For the Abodo campaign, we created a PDF document of the research methodology which we could easily share with publishers.

Include the following in your campaign’s methodology:

• Where and when you received your data.
• What kind and how much data you collected. (Our methodology went on to list exactly which terms we searched for on Twitter.)
• Any exceptions within your collection and analysis, such as omitted information.
• A list of additional sources. (We only use reputable, new sources ideally published within the last year.)

For even more transparency, make your raw data available. This gives publishers a chance to comb through the data to find additional story angles.

5. Don’t feed the trolls

This is true for any content campaign, but it’s especially important to have an error-free campaign when dealing with a sensitive topic since it may be under more scrutiny. Don’t let mistakes in the content become the real controversy.

Build multiple phases of editing into your production process to ensure you’re not releasing inaccurate or low-quality content. Keep these processes consistent by creating a set of editorial guidelines that everyone involved can follow.

We put our campaigns through fact checking and several rounds of quality assurance.

Fact checking should play a complementary role to research and involves verifying accuracy by making sure all data and assertions are true. Every point in the content should have a source that can be verified. Writers should be familiar with best practices for making their work easy to fact-check; this fact-checking guide from Poynter is a good resource.

Quality assurance looks at both the textual and design elements of a campaign to ensure a good user experience. Our QA team reviews things like grammar, clarity (Is this text clearly making a point? Is a design element confusing or hard to read?), and layout/organization.

Include other share-worthy elements

Although the controversial subject matter helped this campaign gain attention, we also incorporated other proven elements of highly shareable content:

• Geographic angle. People wanted to see how their state or city ranked. Many took to social media to express their disappointment or pride in the results.
• Timeliness. Bigotry is a hot-button issue in the U.S. right now amidst racial tension and a heated political situation.
• Comparison. Rankings and comparisons stimulate discussion, especially when people have strong opinions about the rankings.
• Surprising. The results were somewhat shocking since some cities and states which ranked “most PC” or “most prejudiced” were unexpected.

The more share-worthy elements you can tack onto your content, the greater your chances for success.

Have you seen success with controversial or polarizing content? Did you overcome a client’s objection to controversy? Be sure to share your experience in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Rare Earth Elements: What Are They? Who Has Them?

There are 17 rare earth elements that are used in the production of high tech devices such as smart phones and computers, defense equipment such as radar systems and guided missiles, and energy technologies such as electric cars and wind turbines. The elements are found in tiny concentrations and are mixed together, making them difficult to isolate. China has the most global reserves of rare earth elements (42 percent)[i] and produces around 89 percent of global output, which it uses to fuel its high-tech industries, exporting the remainder. Global consumption of rare earth elements in 2016 is expected to be about 155,000 tons—almost 3.5 times greater than the 45,000 tons used 25 years ago. [ii]

According to the Energy Information Administration, reserves are “estimated quantities of energy sources that analysis of geologic and engineering data demonstrates with reasonable certainty are recoverable under existing economic and operating conditions. The location, quantity, and grade of the energy source are usually considered to be well established in such reserves”. Thus, reserves are not the entire resource base since more sources are bound to be found with additional exploration.

Source: Statista

Top 6 Countries Producing Rare-Earth Elements

China is the global leader in the production of rare-earth elements, producing 105,000 tons in 2015, of which it exports about 30 percent. Because of their value and its near monopoly, in 2010, China cut its exports by 40 percent and cut off supplies to Japan over a territorial dispute, causing prices to soar. These actions were challenged by the United States, the European Union, and Japan, resulting in a ruling against the country’s export quotas by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO ruled that the quotas represented an unfair export restriction that allowed China to control global rare earth prices.[iii] Because China does not impose the regulations on mining rare earths that other countries do, “toxic wastes from rare-earth facilities have poisoned water, ruined farmlands, and made people sick”.[iv]

Australia, the second largest producer of rare earth elements, beginning operation in 2007. It produced 10,000 tons in 2015. Australia has the third largest known reserves of rare earth elements—after China and Brazil. Australia based Lynas Corporation is the only operating rare earth miner outside of China, operating the Mt Weld mine and concentration plant in Australia and the rare earth refining and processing plant in Malaysia.

The United States produced 4,100 tons of rare earth elements in 2015—about 25 percent less than in 2014. Molycorp’s Mountain Pass mine in California was the only producing rare earth mine in the United States and its production was reduced when the company filed for bankruptcy protection last summer and shuttered its Mountain Pass operations later in the year. When Molycorp filed for chapter 11 protection, it had over $1.7 billion in debt, much of it occurring when rare earth prices were high due to Chinese trade restrictions.[1] Before bankruptcy, Molycorp invested over $1 billion into the Mountain Pass mine.[v]

Russia produced 2,500 tons of rare earth elements in 2015—the same amount as in 2014–after having invested $1 billion in its production in 2013. The country’s production goal is to meet its own demand in 2017. Russian companies are working on new technologies to recover rare earths from uranium ore.

Thailand increased its production by almost 40 percent in 2015, producing 1,100 tons. It is not clear how much reserves the country contains.

Malaysia produced 200 tons of rare earths in 2015. Malaysia has the world’s largest rare earth refinery, Lynas Corporation’s Lynas Advanced Materials Plant that handles refining for Lynas’s mines in Australia.

 

Source: http://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/rare-earth-investing/top-rare-earth-producing-countries-2013-usgs-2/

Conclusion

China has almost a virtual monopoly on rare earth elements that are needed for high tech (smart phones and laptops), defense equipment, and energy technologies. It not only produces the majority of rare earth elements, but it has the most rare earth reserves. The United States had one operating mine in California up until last year when Molycorp filed for bankruptcy protection and idled the mine. Australia is the only other country with major production of rare earths at a tenth of China’s production last year. Russia hopes to produce enough rare earth elements to satisfy its own demand in 2017.

---

 

[1] Molycorp’s ending stock price of 35 cents per share was less than one two-hundredth of its all-time high: $79.16, on May 3, 2011.

[i] Statista, Rare earth reserves worldwide as of 2015, by country, http://www.statista.com/statistics/277268/rare-earth-reserves-by-country/

[ii] Foreign Policy, Rare Earth Market, July 12, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/12/decoder-rare-earth-market-tech-defense-clean-energy-china-trade/

[iii] Rare Earth Investing News, 6 Top Rare Earth-producing Countries: A Look at Rare Earth Production, July 14, 2016, http://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/rare-earth-investing/top-rare-earth-producing-countries-2013-usgs-2/

[iv]Foreign Policy, Rare Earth Market, July 12, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/12/decoder-rare-earth-market-tech-defense-clean-energy-china-trade/

[v] Wall Street Journal, Molycorp Wins Approval to Exit Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, March 30, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/molycorp-wins-approval-to-exit-chapter-11-bankruptcy-1459379840

The post Rare Earth Elements: What Are They? Who Has Them? appeared first on IER.

Study: Wind & Solar up to 5X More Costly than Existing Coal and Nuclear

WASHINGTON – A new study from the Institute for Energy Research finds that electricity from new wind and solar power is 2.5 to 5 times more expensive than electricity from existing coal and nuclear power.

This innovative study relies on data from the Energy Information Administration and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to find the levelized cost of electricity from existing plants, not just the cost of electricity from new power plants as is typical with many studies.

In addition, IER’s study estimates the costs imposed on the grid by the intermittent nature of wind and solar power. Factoring in these “imposed costs” provides a more realistic estimate of what electricity from new wind and solar power costs. In fact, solar power’s imposed costs actually increase as more capacity is added to the system.

The following chart shows the stark contrast between the cost of electricity from existing and new sources:

 

As the chart indicates:

• Electricity from new solar is nearly 5 times more expensive than from existing nuclear and over 3.5 times more expensive than from existing coal.
• Electricity from new wind is over 3.5 times more expensive than from existing nuclear and over 2.5 times more expensive than from existing coal.

“Much of our existing coal and nuclear fleet could continue to provide affordable, reliable electricity for decades to come if not for policies like the Obama administration’s carbon regulations or the deal struck in California to shut down Diablo Canyon,” said IER President Thomas Pyle. 

“Unnecessarily shutting down our existing generation in favor of expensive and intermittent wind and solar power means Americans will be left with higher electricity bills and less money in their pockets. This will have the harshest impact on poor and middle class families who spend more of their hard-earned money on energy costs. This study adds a much-needed reality check to the debate over our nation’s electricity policy.”

Click here to read the full study.This study was conducted by Tom Stacy, a former member of the ASME Energy Policy Committee, and George Taylor, PhD, the director of Palmetto Energy Research. The source of the calculations used in this study is a compilation of data reported by the generators themselves to FERC and EIA.

###

The post Study: Wind & Solar up to 5X More Costly than Existing Coal and Nuclear appeared first on IER.

Ranking #0: SEO for Answers

Posted by Dr-Pete

It's been over two years since Google launched Featured Snippets, and yet many search marketers still see them as little more than a novelty. If you're not convinced by now that Featured Snippets offer a significant organic opportunity, then today is my attempt to change your mind.

If you somehow haven't encountered a Featured Snippet searching Google over the past two years, here's an example (from a search for "ssl"):

This is a promoted organic result, appearing above the traditional #1 ranking position. At minimum, Featured Snippets contain an extracted answer (more on that later), a display title, and a URL. They may also have an image, bulleted lists, and simple tables.

Why should you care?

We're all busy, and Google has made so many changes in the past couple of years that it can be hard to sort out what's really important to your customer or employer. I get it, and I'm not judging you. So, let's get the hard question out of the way: Why are Featured Snippets important?

(1) They occupy the "#0" position

Here's the top portion of a SERP for "hdmi cable," a commercial query:

There are a couple of interesting things going on here. First, Featured Snippets always (for now) come before traditional organic results. This is why I have taken to calling them the "#0" ranking position. What beats #1? You can see where I'm going with this... #0. In this case, the first organic is pushed down even more, below a set of Related Questions (the "People also ask" box). So, the "#1" organic position is really third in this example.

In addition, notice that the "#0" (that's the last time I'll put it in quotes) position is the same URL as the #1 organic position. So, Amazon is getting two listings on this result for a single page. The Featured Snippet doesn't always come from the #1 organic result (we'll get to that in a minute), but if you score #0, you are always listed twice on page one of results.

(2) They're surprisingly prevalent

In our 10,000-keyword tracking data set, Featured Snippets rolled out at approximately 2% of the queries we track. As of mid-July, they appear on roughly 11% of the keywords we monitor. We don't have good historical data from the first few months after roll-out, but here's a 12-month graph (July 2015 – July 2016):

Featured Snippets have more than doubled in prevalence in the past year, and they've increased by a factor of roughly 5X since launch. After two years, it's clear that this is no longer a short-term or small-scale test. Google considers this experiment to be a success.

(3) They often boost CTR

When Featured Snippets launched, SEOs were naturally concerned that, by extracting and displaying answers, click-through rates to the source site would suffer. While extracting answers from sites was certainly uncharted territory for Google, and we can debate their use of our content in this form, there's a growing body of evidence to suggest that Featured Snippets not only haven't harmed CTR, but they actually boost it in some cases.

In August of 2015, Search Engine Land published a case study by Glenn Gabe that tracked the loss of a Featured Snippet for a client on a competitive keyword. In the two-week period following the loss, that client lost over 39K clicks. In February of 2016, HubSpot did a larger study of high-volume keywords showing that ranking #0 produced a 114% CTR boost, even when they already held the #1 organic position. While these results are anecdotal and may not apply to everyone, evidence continues to suggest that Featured Snippets can boost organic search traffic in many cases.

Where do they come from?

Featured Snippets were born out of a problem that dates back to the early days of search. Pre-Google, many search players, including Yahoo, were human-curated directories first. As content creation exploded, humans could no longer keep up, especially in anything close to real-time, and search engines turned to algorithmic approaches and machine curation.

When Google launched the Knowledge Graph, it was based entirely on human-curated data, such as Freebase and Wikidata. You can see this data in traditional "Knowledge Cards," sometimes generically called "answer boxes." For example, this card appears on a search for "Who is the CEO of Tesla?":

The answer is short and factual, and there is no corresponding source link for it. This comes directly from the curated Knowledge Graph. If you run a search for "Tesla," you can see this more easily in the Knowledge Panel on that page:

In the middle, you can see an entry for "CEO: Elon Musk." This isn't just a block of display text — each of these line items are factoids that exist individually as structured data in the Knowledge Graph. You can test this by running searches against other factoids, like "When was Tesla founded?"

While Google does a decent job of matching many forms of a question to answers in the Knowledge Graph, they can't escape the limits of human curation. There are also questions that don't easily fit the "factoid" model. For example, if you search "What is ludicrous mode Tesla?" (pardon the weird syntax), you get this Featured Snippet:

Google's solution was obvious, if incredibly difficult — take the trillions of pages in their index and use them to generate answers in real-time. So, that's exactly what they did. If you go to the source page on Engadget, the text in the Featured Snippet is taken directly from on-page copy (I've added the green highlighting):

It's not as simple as just scraping off the first paragraph with a spatula and flipping it onto the SERP, though. Google does seem to be parsing content fairly deeply for relevance, and they've been improving their capabilities constantly since the launch of Featured Snippets. Consider a couple of other examples with slightly different formats. Here's a Featured Snippet for "How much is a Tesla?":

Note the tabular data. This data is being extracted and reformatted from a table on the target page. This isn't structured data — it's plain-old HTML. Google has not only parsed the table but determined that tabular data is a sensible format in response to the question. Here's the original table:

Here's one of my favorite examples, from a search for "how to cook bacon." For any aspiring bacon wizards, please pay careful attention to step #4:

Note the bulleted (ordered) list. As with the table, not only has Google determined that a list is a relevant format for the answer, but they've created this list. Now look at the target page:

There's no HTML ordered list (<ol></ol>) on this page. Google is taking a list-like paragraph style and converting it into a simpler list. This content is also fairly deep into a long page of text. Again, there is no structured data in play. Google is using any and all content available in the quest for answers.

How do you get one?

So, let's get to the tactical question — how can you score a Featured Snippet? You need to know two things. First, you have to rank organically on the first page of results. Every Featured Snippet we've tracked also ranks on page one. Second, you need to have content that effectively targets the question.

Do you have to rank #1 to get the #0 position? No. Ranking #1 certainly doesn't hurt, but we've found examples of Featured Snippet URLs from across all of page one. As of June, the graph below represents the distribution of organic rankings for all of the Featured Snippets in our tracking data set:

Just about 1/3 of Featured Snippets are pulled from the #1 position, with the bulk of the remaining coming from positions #2–#5. There are opportunties across all of page one, in theory, but searches where you rank in the top five are going to be your best targets. The team at STAT produced an in-depth white paper on Featured Snippets across a very large data set that showed a similar pattern, with about 30% of Featured Snippet URLs ranking in the #1 organic position.

If you're not convinced yet, here's another argument for the "Why should you care?" column. Once you're ranking on page one, our data suggests that getting the Featured Snippet is more about relevance than ranking/authority. If you're ranking #2–#5 it may be easier to compete for position #0 than it is for position #1. Featured Snippets are the closest thing to an SEO shortcut you're likely to get in 2016.

The double-edged sword of Featured Snippets (for Google) is that, since the content comes from our websites, we ultimately control it. I showed in a previous post how we fixed a Featured Snippet with updated data, but let's get to what you really want to hear — can we take a Featured Snippet from a competitor?

A while back, I did a search for "What is Page Authority?" Page Authority is a metric created by us here at Moz, and so naturally we have a vested interest in who's ranking for that term. I came across the following Featured Snippet.

At the time, DrumbeatMarketing.net was ranking #2 and Moz was ranking #1, so we knew we had an opportunity. They were clearly doing something right, and we tried to learn from it. Their page title addressed the question directly. They jumped quickly to a concise answer, whereas we rambled a little bit. So, we rewrote the page, starting with a clear definition and question-targeted header:

This wasn't the only change, but I think it's important to structure your answers for brevity, or at least summarize them somewhere on the page. A general format of a quick summary at the top, followed by a deeper dive seems to be effective. Journalists sometimes call this an "inverted pyramid" structure, and it's useful for readers as well, especially Internet readers who tend to skim articles.

In very short order, our changes had the desired impact, and we took the #0 position:

This didn't take more authority, deep structural changes, or a long-term social media campaign. We simply wrote a better answer. I believe we also did a service to search users. This is a better page for people in a hurry and leads to a better search snippet than before. Don't think of this as optimizing for Featured Snippets, or you're going to over-optimize and be haunted by the Ghost of SEO Past. Think of it as being a better answer.

What should you target?

Featured Snippets can require a slightly different and broader approach to keyword research, especially since many of us don't routinely track questions. So, what kind of questions tend to trigger Featured Snippets? It's helpful to keep in mind the 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why) + How, but many of these questions will generate answers from the Knowledge Graph directly.

To keep things simple, ask yourself this: is the answer a matter of simple fact (or a "factoid")? For example, a question like "How old is Beyoncé?" or "When is Labor Day?" is going to be pulled from the Knowledge Graph. While human curation can't keep up with the pace of the web, WikiData and other sources are still impressive and cover a massive amount of territory. Typically, these questions won't produce Featured Snippets.

What and implied-what questions

A good starting point is "What...?" questions, such as our "What is Page Authority?" experiment. This is especially effective for industry terms and other specialized knowledge that can't be easily reduced to a dictionary definition.

Keep in mind that many Featured Snippets appear on implied "What..." questions. In other words, "What" never appears in the query. For example, here's a Featured Snippet for "PPC":

Google has essentially decided that this fairly ambiguous query deserves an answer to "What is PPC?" In other words, they've implied the "What." This is fairly common now for industry terms and phrases that might be unfamiliar to the average searcher, and is a good starting point for your keyword research.

Keep in mind that common words will produce a dictionary entry. For example, here's a Knowledge Card for "What is search?":

These dictionary cards are driven by human-curated data sources and are not organic, in the typical sense of the word. Google has expanded dictionary results in the past year, so you'll need to focus on less common terms and phrases.

Why and how questions

"Why... ?" questions are good fodder for Featured Snippets because they can't easily be answered with factoids. They often require some explanation, such as this snippet for "Why is the sky blue?":

Likewise, "How...?" questions often require more in-depth answers. An especially good target for Featured Snippets is "How to... ?" questions, which tend to have practical answers that can be summarized. Here's one for "How to make tacos":

One benefit of "Why," "How," and "How to" questions is that the Featured Snippet summary often just serves as a teaser to a longer answer. The summary can add credibility to your listing while still attracting clicks to in-depth content. "How... ?" may also be implied in some cases. For example, a search for "convert PDF to Word" brings up a Featured Snippet for a "How to..." page.

What content is eligible?

Once you have a question in mind, and that question/query is eligible for Featured Snippets, there's another piece of the targeting problem: which page on your site is best equipped to answer that question? Let's take, for example, the search "What is SEO?". It has the following Featured Snippet from Wikipedia:

Moz ranks on page one for that search, but it still begs two questions: (1) is the ranking page the best answer to the question (in Google's eyes), and (2) what content on the page do they see as best matching the question. Fortunately, you can use the "site:" operator along with your search term to help answer both questions. Here's a Featured Snippet for [site:moz.com "what is seo"]:

Now, we know that, within just our own site, Google is seeing The Beginner's Guide as the best match to the question, and we have an idea of how they're parsing that page for an answer. If we were willing to rewrite the page just to answer this question (and that certainly involves trade-offs), we'd have a much better sense of where to start.

What about Related Questions?

Featured Snippets have a close cousin that launched more recently, known to Google as Related Questions and sometimes called the "People Also Ask" box. If I run a search for "page authority," it returns the following set of Related Questions (nestled into the organic results):

Although Related Questions have a less dominant position in search results than Featured Snippets (they're not generally at the top), they're more prevalent, occurring on almost 17% of the searches in our tracking data set. These boxes can contain up to four related questions (currently), and each question expands to look something like this:

At this point, that expanded content should look familiar — it's being generated from the index, has an organic link, and looks almost exactly like a Featured Snippet. It also has a link to a Google search for the related question. Clicking on that search brings up the following Featured Snippet:

Interestingly, and somewhat confusingly, that Featured Snippet doesn't exactly match the snippet in the Related Questions box, even though they're answering the same question from the same page. We're not completely sure how Featured Snippets and Related Questions are connected, but they share a common philosophy and very likely a lot of common code. Being a better answer will help you rank for both.

What's the long game?

If you want to know where all of this is headed in the future, you have to ask a simple question: what's in it for Google? It's easy to jump to conspiracy theories when Google takes our content to provide direct answers, but what do they gain? They haven't monetized this box, and a strong, third-party answer draws attention and could detract from ad clicks. They're keeping you on their page for another few seconds, but that's little more than a vanity metric.

I think the answer is that this is part of a long shift toward mobile and alternative display formats. Look at the first page of a search for "what is page authority" on an Android device:

Here, the Featured Snippet dominates the page — there's just not room for much more on a mobile screen. As technology diversifies into watches and other wearables, this problem will expand. There's an even more difficult problem than screen space, though, and that's when you have no screen at all.

If you do a voice search on Android for "what is page authority," Google will read back to you the following answer:

"According to Moz, Page Authority is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank on search engines."

This is an even more truncated answer, and voice search appends the attribution ("According to Moz..."). You can still look at your phone screen, of course, but imagine if you had asked the question in your car or on Google's new search appliance (their competitor to Amazon's Echo). In those cases, the Featured Snippet wouldn't just be the most prominent answer — it would be the only answer.

Google has to adapt to our changing world of devices, and often those devices requires succinct answers and aren't well-suited to a traditional SERP. This may not be so much about profiting from direct answers for Google as it is about survival. New devices will demands new formats.

How do you track all of this?

After years of tracking rich SERP features, watching the world of organic search evolve, and preaching that evolution to our customers and industry, I'm happy to say that our Product Team has been hard at work for months building the infrastructure and UI necessary to manage the rich and complicated world of SERP features, including Featured Snippets. Spoiler alert: expect an announcement from us very soon.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!