Obama’s EPA Ups Renewable Fuel Requirements for 2017

The day before Thanksgiving, the Obama Administration released its final biofuel requirements for 2017, raising the required biofuel levels from those proposed earlier this year. The new levels are above the blend wall, i.e. where the level of biofuels required exceeds 10 percent of motor fuel demand. Exceeding the blend wall matters because many automobile manufacturers will not warranty vehicles using gasoline with ethanol volumes greater than 10 percent. Besides increasing the blend wall, refiners must purchase renewable identification numbers when they do not meet the biofuel levels stipulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Those renewable identification numbers have been increasing in value and the costs are passed onto the consumer, which results in higher gasoline prices for Americans.

The New Requirements for 2017

Refiners will be forced to blend 19.28 billion gallons of ethanol, biomass-based diesel and other biofuels into the gasoline and diesel supply in 2017. This is a record amount. The corn-based ethanol requirement increases to 15 billion gallons, which is the level required by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that created the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).  The RFS rule for 2017 is 1.2 billion gallons higher than the amount of renewable fuels that EPA required to be blended into the fuel supply for 2016–a 6 percent increase.[i]

To summarize, the new RFS rule requires that:

• Conventional renewable fuel increases to 15 billion-gallons, which was the congressional target in the 2007 legislation.
• Biomass-based biodiesel increases by 100 million gallons–the required volume for 2017 is twice that of the minimum congressional target.
• Cellulosic biofuel increases by 35 percent over the 2016 standard.
• Advanced biofuels, comprised of biomass-based diesel, cellulosic biofuel, and other biofuel increases by 19 percent over the 2016 standard.

The EPA required renewable fuel volumes for 2014 to 2018 are listed below. The only requirement that is provided for 2018 is the volume for biomass-based diesel.[ii]

Renewable Fuel Volume Requirements for 2014-2018

	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
Cellulosic biofuel (million gallons)	33	123	230	311	n/a
Biomass-based diesel (billion gallons)	1.63	1.73	1.9	2.0	2.1
Advanced biofuel (billion gallons)	2.67	2.88	3.61	4.28	n/a
Renewable fuel (billion gallons)	16.28	16.93	18.11	19.28	n/a

Source: http://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-finalizes-increase-renewable-fuel-volumes

Final Levels Are Higher Than EPA Proposed Levels

Earlier this year, EPA proposed its 2017 biofuel requirements and provided them for comment. The proposed volumes were as follows: 14.8 billion gallons for conventional or corn-based biofuel and 4.0 billion gallons for advanced biofuels for a total of 18.8 billion gallons. The final levels released on November 23, 2016, are 2.6 percent higher than those proposed earlier this year.[iii]

According to the Energy Information Administration, ethanol’s share of the U.S. gasoline market has already exceeded 10 percent a couple of times this fall.[iv] EPA’s proposed levels for 2017 were expected to exceed the blend wall with an expected share of 10.44 percent.[v] With the final required amounts for 2017 even higher at 19.28 billion gallons, those requirements will surely exceed the blend wall by an even higher percentage.

As mentioned earlier, many automobile manufacturers will not warranty vehicles that use greater than 10 percent ethanol. Further, any amount of ethanol in motor fuel can damage small engines such as lawn mowers, snow blowers, and boats. And, because corn is used in ethanol production which competes with food uses, the National Council of Chain Restaurants claims that ethanol drives up the cost of food and causes market volatility that impacts both industry and consumers.[vi]

Costs Increase When Required Biofuel Levels Are Not Met

Refiners that are not able to meet the renewable fuel requirement must purchase Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs)–credits that allow them to make up the difference between what is mandated and what is actually used. While RINs had originally cost a few cents when biofuel requirements were low, RINs have now escalated in cost. RINs tracking ethanol use have doubled to 91 cents in a year, and RINs tracking biodiesel have increased 59 percent to 95.5 cents during the same period. Due to the large increase in the cost of RINs, refiners are incurring huge costs: Valero Energy Corp. expects its cost for RINs to total $850 million this year; CVR Refining expects the cost to total $250 million; PBF Energy expects an increased cost burden of 15 percent.[vii]

RINs will either bankrupt our small, merchant refiners and/or be passed onto gasoline and diesel prices which will hurt American consumers. Either way, RIN costs of this magnitude are not good for the American economy. While ethanol has benefits to refiners as an octane booster and oxygenate, mandated levels that exceed the blend wall just drive up prices for everyone. There is bipartisan legislation (H.R. 5180) in the House to limit EPA ethanol requirements in total transportation fuel at 9.7 percent, which could help to reduce the market volatility that RINs produce.[viii]

Conclusion

The Obama Administration seems to strive to set rules that intentionally drive up the cost of energy and hurt our economy without achieving any major benefit. This is the case for the Clean Power Plan and it is the case for biofuel requirements. Exceeding the blend wall, which is the case for the 2017 biofuel requirements mandated by EPA, causes harm to vehicles, small engines, merchant refiners, and American consumers.

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[i] The Hill, Feds Boost Biofuel Mandate for 2017, November 23, 2016, http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/307348-feds-boost-biofuels-mandate-for-2017

[ii] National Law Review, EPA Finalizes Increase in Renewable Fuel Volumes, November 26, 2016, http://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-finalizes-increase-renewable-fuel-volumes

[iii] National Law Review, EPA Delivers Proposed Renewable Fuel Standard Requirements to OMB, November 4, 2016, http://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-delivers-proposed-renewable-fuel-standard-requirements-to-omb

[iv] Des Moines Register, Ethanol advocates, opponents brace for ruling, November 2, 2016, http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/2016/11/02/ethanol-advocates-opponents-brace-ruling/93170002/

[v] Washington Times, EPA’s move to raise ethanol mix in gasoline fuels alarm over engine damage, May 20, 2016, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/20/epas-move-raise-ethanol-mix-gasoline-fuels-alarm-o/

[vi] Farm and Diary, EPA issues final renewable fuel Standard volumes for ethanol, November 26, 2016, http://www.farmanddairy.com/news/epa-issues-final-renewable-fuel-standard-volumes-for-ethanol/384221.html

[vii] Oil Price, Trump’s Election Is Great News For Independent Refiners, November 18, 2016, http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Trumps-Election-Is-Great-News-For-Independent-Refiners.html

[viii] BNA, Biofuel Mandate Opponents Build Overhaul Momentum, November 17, 2016, http://www.bna.com/biofuel-mandate-opponents-n57982082935/

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GAO Report Reveals the Failures of the Renewable Fuel Standard

Besides issues with the blend wall and with renewable identification numbers that we have discussed in the past, the General Accountability Office (GAO) has identified other issues with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in recent reports. Namely, that the RFS is not meeting expected greenhouse gas reductions because advanced biofuels are not being produced to the levels specified in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Nor will they meet these production levels in the near future because they are too expensive to produce. For example, in 2017, 24 billion gallons of biofuels were to be produced according to the legislation that created the RFS, but only 19.28 billion gallons are being required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because the cost of producing advanced biofuels, particularly cellulosic ethanol, is prohibitive. Also hampering production is the boom in domestic oil and gas production that has made fossil fuels far more inexpensive in the marketplace.

Thus, the congressionally mandated levels for biofuels are irrelevant. These levels are specified through 2022. After that date, EPA is to set the levels. Despite EPA lowering the congressionally mandated levels in recent years, it is still setting ethanol and other biofuels blending requirements that are unrealistic and potentially harmful to engines, resulting in increased costs to consumers. According to a study by the Manhattan Institute, biofuel subsidies and mandates cost U.S. motorists $10 billion annually in additional fuel costs.[i]

The GAO Reports

The RFS was created in 2005 and amended by Congress in 2007, where the stated goals of the program were to reduce oil imports and greenhouse gas emissions. According to the GAO, the RFS has fallen short on both these goals. Since the RFS was established, U.S. oil imports have decreased, and while the RFS did contribute to the decrease, other factors contributed more significantly. These include the increase in domestic oil production due to the advent of hydraulic fracturing and the decrease in the consumption of gasoline.[ii]

The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions were expected to come from the advanced biofuel requirements of the RFS. However, because of their shortfall in production, most of the biofuels blended under the RFS are from conventional corn ethanol, which contributes less to greenhouse gas reductions than advanced biofuels. For example, the cellulosic biofuel blended into the transportation fuel supply in 2015 was less than 5 percent of the statutory target of 3 billion gallons. As a result, EPA has reduced the RFS targets for advanced biofuels in each of the last 4 years. According to GAO, the shortfall of advanced biofuels is the result of high production costs. Further, GAO notes that the current investment climate in research and development required to make these fuels more cost-competitive with petroleum-based fuels is unlikely, even in the longer term.

The graph below shows the congressionally mandated levels of advanced biofuels versus the levels that EPA has set from 2010 to 2017. Note that the levels that GAO used in its report for 2017 were the levels proposed by EPA and not the final levels that were recently released. The final advanced biofuel levels were 0.28 billion gallons higher than the proposed levels.

Source: GAO, http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/681252.pdf

According to the GAO, the federal government supported research and development related to advanced biofuels through direct research or grants. In fiscal years 2013 through 2015, the federal government obligated over $1.1 billion for advanced biofuels research and development. Of that amount, the Department of Agriculture obligated over $168 million that developed a process to increase production of butanol, a drop-in fuel that lowered production costs by over 20 percent. According to the GAO, the federal agencies are shifting their focus to drop-in fuels in part because they are compatible with existing infrastructure, which makes them more desirable than cellulosic ethanol.[iii]

Despite spending on research and development by the federal government, there are several factors that make significant increases to advanced biofuel production challenging. According to GAO, biofuels that are technologically well understood include biodiesel, renewable diesel, renewable natural gas, cellulosic ethanol, and certain drop-in fuels. While biodiesel and renewable diesel are being produced in significant volumes, it is unlikely that their production can expand much in the next few years because of feedstock limitations. Current production of cellulosic biofuels is far below the statutory volumes and there is limited potential for expanded production because production costs are currently too high. While drop-in fuels are technologically well understood, they are not being produced because their production costs are also too high.

Further development in advanced biofuels is expected to be stunted because of the low price of fossil fuels relative to advanced biofuels, which is a disincentive for consumers to adopt greater use of biofuels and a deterrent for private investors to enter the advanced biofuels market. Other uncertainties include government policy, including whether the RFS and federal incentives that support advanced biofuels will remain in effect.

Conclusion

According to the GAO, the two major goals of the legislation that created the RFS was to reduce oil imports and greenhouse gas emissions. While both of these have been reduced, the RFS had less to contribute than other factors. The reduction in oil imports occurred mainly due to greater domestic production of oil and lower consumption of gasoline. The RFS contributed less to greenhouse gas reductions than expected because advanced biofuels production is far below their congressionally mandated levels due to lack of feedstocks and high costs of production. Further, there are serious challenges to increased production of advanced biofuel technologies in the future because of their high costs, the relatively low price of fossil fuels, and uncertainty in the regulatory environment.

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[i] Manhattan Institute, The Corn Hidden Ethanol Tax, March 2015, http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/ib_32.pdf

[ii] Government Accountability Office, RENEWABLE FUEL STANDARD Program Unlikely to Meet Its Targets for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions, November 2016, http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/681252.pdf

[iii] Government Accountability Office, RENEWABLE FUEL STANDARD Low Expected Production Volumes Make It Unlikely That Advanced Biofuels Can Meet Increasing Targets, November 2016, http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/681256.pdf

The post GAO Report Reveals the Failures of the Renewable Fuel Standard appeared first on IER.

5 Takeaways from Earning Links in 130 Countries

Posted by kerryjones

I was in Peru earlier this year for a digital marketing conference, and I overwhelmingly heard the same frustration: “It’s really hard to use outreach to earn links or PR coverage in our country.”

This wasn’t for lack of trying. As I continued to hear this sentiment during my visit, I learned there simply weren’t a lot of opportunities. For one thing, in Peru, there aren’t nearly as many publishers as in more populous countries. Most publishers expected payment for mentioning a brand. Furthermore, journalists did a lot of job-hopping, so maintaining relationships was difficult.

This is a conundrum not limited to Peru. I know many people outside of the US can relate. When you see the Fractl team and others sharing stories about how we earn hundreds of links for a single content piece, you might think it must be nice to do outreach somewhere like the US where online publishers are plentiful and they'll feature great content with no strings attached. While the work my team does isn’t easy by any means, I do recognize that there are ample opportunities for earning links and press coverage from American publishers.

What can you do if opportunities are scarce in your country?

One solution is focusing your outreach efforts on publishers in neighboring countries or countries with the same language and a similar culture. During conversations with the Attachmedia team (the company hosting the conference I was at), I learned they had much greater success earning media stories and building links outside of Peru because publishers in surrounding South American countries were more receptive to their email pitches and publishing third-party content.

But you may not need to do any international outreach if you know how to create the type of content that will organically attract attention beyond your borders.

At Fractl, many of our top-performing client campaigns have secured a lot of international links even without us doing much, or any, international outreach. To dig deeper, we recently conducted an analysis of 290 top-performing client content campaigns to determine which content naturally attracted coverage from international publishers (and thus, international links). Altogether, these campaigns were featured by publishers in 130 countries, earning more than 4,000 international media stories.

In this post, I’ll share what we found about what causes content to spread around the world.

1. Domestic success was a key factor in driving international placements for Fractl’s campaigns.

For years, we’ve noticed that if content gets enough attention in the US, it will organically begin to receive international press and links. Watch how this happens in the GIF below, which visualizes how one of our campaigns spread globally after reaching critical mass in the US:

Our study confirmed that there’s a correlation between earning a high number of links domestically and earning international links.

When we looked at our 50 most successful client campaigns that have earned the highest number of media stories, we discovered that these campaigns also received the most international coverage. Out of the 4,000 international placements we analyzed, 70 percent of them came from these 50 top-performing campaigns.

We also found that content which earned at least 25 international media pickups also earned at least 25 domestic pickups, so there’s a minimum one-to-one ratio of international to domestic pickups.

2. Overcome language barriers with visual formats that don’t rely on text.

Maps showing a contrast between countries were the visualizations of choice for international publishers.

World maps can be easily understood by global audiences, and make it easy for publishers to find an angle to cover. A client campaign, which looked at how much people eat and drink around the world, included maps highlighting differences between the countries. This was our fourth-highest-performing campaign in terms of international coverage.

It’s easy for a writer whose primary language isn’t English to look at a shaded map like the one above and pick out the story about his or her country. For example, a Belgian publisher who covered the consumption campaign used a headline that roughly translated to “Belgians eat more calories than Americans”:

Images were the second most popular visual format, which tells us that a picture may be worth a thousand words in any language. One great example of this is our “Evolution of Miss Universe” campaign, where we created a series of animated and interactive visualizations using photos of Miss Universe winners since 1952:

The simplicity of the visuals made this content accessible to all viewers regardless of the language they spoke. Paired with the international angle, this helped the campaign gain more than 40 pickups from global sites.

As we move down the rankings, formats that relied on more text, such as infographics, were less popular internationally. No doubt this is because international audiences can’t connect with content they can’t understand.

When creating text-heavy visualizations, consider if someone who speaks a different language can understand it — would it still make sense if you removed all the text?

Pro tip: If your outreach strategy is targeting multiple countries or a country where more than one language is widely spoken, it may be worth the effort to produce text-heavy visuals in multiple languages.

3. Topics that speak to universal human interests performed best internationally.

Our top-performing international campaigns show a clear preference for topics that resonate globally. The six topics that performed best internationally were:

1. Drugs and alcohol
2. Health and fitness
3. Entertainment
4. Sex and relationships
5. Travel
6. Technology

Bear in the mind that these topics are reflective of our client campaigns, so every topic imaginable was not included in this study.

We drilled this down a little more and looked at the specific topics covered in our top 50 campaigns. You’ll notice many of the most popular topics would make your grandma blush.

We know that controversial topics are highly effective in grabbing attention, and the list above confirms that pushing boundaries works on a global scale. (We weren’t exactly surprised that a campaign called “Does Size Matter?” resonated internationally.)

But don’t look at the chart above and assume that you need to make your content about sex, drugs, and rock and roll if you want to gain international attention. As you can see, even pedestrian fare performed well globally. Consider how you can create content that speaks to basic human interests, like technology, food, and … Instagram.

4. A global angle isn’t necessary.

While our top five international campaigns did have a global focus, more than half of our 50 top-performing international campaigns did not have a global angle. This tells us that a geographic angle doesn’t determine international success.

Some examples of non-geographic ideas that performed well are:

• A tool that calculates indirect sexual exposure based on how many partners you’ve had
• The types of white lies people commonly tell and hear
• A face-off between Siri, Cortana, and Google Now performance
• A sampling of how many bacteria and germs are found in hotel rooms

We also found that US-centric campaigns were, unsurprisingly, less likely to succeed. Only three of our campaigns with America-focused titles received more than 25 international placements. If your content topic does have a geographic angle, make sure to broaden it to have a multi-national or worldwide focus.

Pro tip: Consider how you can add an international twist to content ideas that already performed well domestically. The Miss Universe campaign example I shared above? That came to fruition after we successfully did a similar campaign about Miss America. Similarly, we could likely reboot our “Tolerance in America” campaign to look at racism around the world and expect it to be successful, as this topic already proved popular at home and is certainly relevant worldwide.

5. The elements of share-worthy content hold true internationally.

Over the years, we’ve seen time and time again that including certain elements in content greatly increases the chance of success. All of our content that achieved international success included some combination of the following:

• Surprising information
• An emotionally resonant topic
• A universally appealing topic
• Comparison or ranking of multiple places, things, or ideas
• A geographic angle
• A pop culture angle

Look back at the content examples I shared in this post, and make note of how many of the characteristics above are present in each one. To increase the likelihood that your content appeals to global audiences, be sure to read this post about the vital role these elements play in creating content that earns a lot of links and social shares.

What has your experience been like using content to attract international press and links? I’d love to hear what’s worked for you — leave a comment below!

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The 7 Citation Building Myths Plaguing Local SEO

Posted by JoyHawkins

Previously, I wrote an article unveiling some of the most common myths I see in the Local SEO space. I thought I’d do a follow-up that specifically talked about the myths pertaining to citations that I commonly hear from both small business owners and SEOs alike.

Myth #1: If your citations don’t include your suite number, you should stop everything you're doing and fix this ASAP.

Truth: Google doesn’t even recognize suite numbers for a whopping majority of Google business listings. Even though you enter a suite number in Google My Business, it doesn’t translate into the "Suite #" field in Google MapMaker — it simply gets eliminated. Google also pays more attention to the location (pin) marker of the business when it comes to determining the actual location and less to the actual words people enter in as the address, as there can be multiple ways to name a street address. Google’s Possum update recently introduced a filter for search queries that is based on location. We’ve seen this has to do with the address itself and how close other businesses in the same industry are to your location. Whether or not you have a suite number in Google My Business has nothing to do with it.

Darren Shaw from Whitespark, an expert on everything related to citations, says:

“You often can’t control the suite number on your citations. Some sites force the suite number to appear before the address, some after the address, some with a # symbol, some with “Ste,” and others with “Suite.” If minor discrepancies like these in your citations affected your citation consistency or negatively impacted your rankings, then everyone would have a problem.”

In summary, if your citations look great but are missing the suite number, move along. There are most likely more important things you could be spending time on that would actually impact your ranking.

Myth #2: Minor differences in your business name in citations are a big deal.

Truth: Say your business name is "State Farm: Bob Smith," yet one citation lists you as “Bob Smith Insurance” and another as “Bob Smith State Farm.” As Mike Blumenthal states: “Put a little trust in the algorithm.” If Google was incapable of realizing that those 3 names are really the same business (especially when their address & phone number are identical), we’d have a big problem on our hands. There would be so many duplicate listings on Google we wouldn’t even begin to be able to keep track. Currently, I only generally see a lot of duplicates if there are major discrepancies in the address and phone number.

Darren Shaw also agrees on this:

“I see this all the time with law firms. Every time a new partner joins the firm or leaves the firm, they change their name. A firm can change from “Fletcher, McDonald, & Jones” to “Fletcher, Jones, & Smith” to “Fletcher Family Law” over the course of 3 years, and as long as the phone number and address stay the same, it will have no negative impact on their rankings. Google triangulates the data it finds on the web by three data points: name, address, and phone number. If two of these are a match, and then the name is a partial match, Google will have no problem associating those citations with the correct listing in GMB.”

Myth #3: NAP cleanup should involve fixing your listings on hundreds of sites.

Truth: SEO companies use this as a scare tactic, and it works very well. They have a small business pay them for citation cleanup. They’ll do a scan of your incorrect data and send you a list of hundreds of directories that have your information wrong. This causes you to gasp and panic and instantly realize you must hire them to spend hours cleaning all this up, as it must be causing the ranking of your listing on Google to tank.

Let’s dive into an example that I've seen. Local.com is a site that feeds to hundreds of smaller directories on newspaper sites. If you have a listing wrong on Local.com, it might appear that your listing is incorrect on hundreds of directories. For example, these three listings are on different domains, but if you look at the pages they're identical and they all say “Local.com” at the top:

http://directory.hawaiitribune-herald.com/profile?listingid=108895814

http://directory.lufkindailynews.com/profile?listingid=108895814

http://flbiz.oscnewsgazette.com/profile?listingid=108895814

Should this cause you to panic? No. Fixing it on Local.com itself should fix all the hundreds of other places. Even if it didn’t, Google hasn’t even indexed any of these URLs. (Note: they might index my examples since I just linked to them in this Moz article, so I’m including some screenshots from while I was writing this):

If Google hasn’t even indexed the content, it’s a good sign that the content doesn’t mean much and it’s nothing you should stress about. Google would have no incentive or reason to index all these different URLs due to the fact that the content on them is literally the same. Additionally, no one links to them (aside from me in this article, of course).

As Darren Shaw puts it,

“This one really irks me. There are WAY more important things for you to spend your time/money on than trying to fix a listing on a site like scranton.myyellowpageclassifieds.biz. Chances are, any attempt to update this listing would be futile anyway, because small sites like these are basically unmanaged. They’re collecting their $200/m in Adsense revenue and don’t have any interest in dealing with or responding to any listing update requests. In our Citation Audit and Cleanup service we offer two packages. One covers the top 30 sites + 5 industry/city-specific sites, and the other covers the top 50 sites + 5 industry/city-specific sites. These are sites that are actually important and valuable to local search. Audit and cleanup on sites beyond these is generally a waste of time and money.”

Myth #4: There's no risk in cancelling an automated citation service.

People often wonder what might happen to their NAP issues if they cancel their subscription with a company like Yext or Moz Local. Although these companies don’t do anything to intentionally cause old data to come back, there have been some recent interesting findings around what actually happens when you cancel.

Truth: In one case, Phil Rozek did a little case study for a business that had to cancel Moz Local recently. The good news is that although staying with them is generally a good decision, this business didn’t seem to have any major issues after cancelling.

Yext claims on their site that they don’t do anything to push the old data back that was previously wrong. They explain that when you cancel, “the lock that was put in place to protect the business listing is no longer present. Once this occurs, the business listing is subject to the normal compilation process at the search engine, online directory, mobile app, or social network. In fact, because Yext no longer has this lock in place, Yext has no control over the listing directly at all, and the business listing data will now act as it normally would occur without Yext.”

Nyagoslav Zhekov just recently published a study on cancelling Yext and concluded that most of the listings either disappear or revert back to their previous incorrect state after cancelling. It seems that Yext acts as a sort of cover on top of the listing, and once Yext is cancelled, that cover is removed. So, there does seem to be some risk with cancelling Yext.

In summary, there is definitely a risk when you decide to cancel an ongoing automated service that was previously in place to correct your citations. It’s important for people to realize that if they decide to do this, they might want to budget for some manual citation building/cleanup in case any issues arise.

Myth #5: Citation building is the only type of link building strategy you need to succeed at Local SEO.

Many Local SEO companies have the impression that citation building is the only type of backlinking strategy needed for small businesses to rank well in the 3-pack. According to this survey that Bright Local did, 72% of Local SEOs use citation building as a way of building links.

Truth: Local SEO Guide found in their Local Search Ranking Factors study that although citations are important, if that’s the only backlinking strategy you’re using, you're most likely not going to rank well in competitive markets. They found also found that links are the key competitive differentiator even when it comes to Google My Business Rankings. So if you're in a competitive industry or market and want to dominate the 3-pack, you need to look into additional backlinking strategies over and above citations.

Darren adds more clarity to the survey’s results by stating,

“They’re saying that citations are still very important, but they are a foundational tactic. You absolutely need a core base of citations to gain trust at Google, and if you don’t have them you don’t have a chance in hell at ranking, but they are no longer a competitive difference maker. Once you have the core 50 or so citations squared away, building more and more citations probably isn’t what your local SEO campaign needs to move the needle further.”

Myth #6: Citations for unrelated industries should be ignored if they share the same phone number.

This was a question that has come up a number of times with our team. If you have a restaurant that once had a phone number but then closes its doors, and a new law firm opens up down the street and gets assigned that phone number, should the lawyer worry about all the listings that exist for the restaurant (since they're in different industries)?

Truth: I reached out to Nyagoslav Zhekov, the Director of Local Search at Whitespark, to get the truth on this one. His response was:

“As Google tries to mimic real-life experiences, sooner or later this negative experience will result in some sort of algorithmic downgrading of the information by Google. If Google manages to figure out that a lot of customers look for and call a phone number that they think belongs to another business, it is logical that it will result in negative user experience. Thus, Google will assign a lower trust score to a Google Maps business record that offers information that does not clearly and unquestionably belong to the business for which the record is. Keeping in mind that the phone number is, by design and by default, the most unique and the most standardized information for a business (everything else is less standardize-able than the phone number), this is, as far as I am concerned, the most important information bit and the most significant identifier Google uses when determining how trustworthy particular information for a business is.”

He also pointed out that users finding the phone number for the restaurant and calling it continually would be a negative experience for both the customer and the law firm (who would have to continually confirm they're not a restaurant) so there would be added benefit in getting these listings for the restaurant marked closed or removed.

Since Darren Shaw gave me so much input for this article, he also wanted to add a seventh myth that he comes across regularly:

Myth #7: Google My Business is a citation.

“This one is maybe more of a mis-labelling problem than a myth, but your listing at Google isn’t really a citation. At Whitespark we refer to Google, Bing, and Apple Maps as 'Core Search Engines' (yes, Yahoo has been demoted to just a citation). The word 'citation' comes from the concept of 'citing' your sources in an academic paper. Using this conceptual framework, you can think of your Google listing as the academic paper, and all of your listings out on the web as the sources that cite the business. Your Google listing is like the queen bee and all the citations out there are the workers contributing to keep the queen bee alive and healthy.”

Hopefully that lays some of the fears and myths around citations to rest. If you have questions or ideas of other myths on this topic, we’d love to hear about it in the comments!

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Dakota Pipeline: Obama Administration Violates Rule of Law

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a 1,172 mile pipeline that, once completed, will transport oil from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota to Illinois, crossing 4 states. The pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, spent over two years obtaining the required approvals and permits for its construction. This summer, after the pipeline was about half complete, the Standing Rock Sioux protested the pipeline, bringing the issue to court because the tribe claimed there could be possible contamination of drinking water and disruption to culturally important sites that are not on the reservation. The courts ruled against the tribe because there was ample outreach by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during the more than two-year permitting process. After the court declined to halt the pipeline, the Obama Administration ignored the rule of law and halted a small part of the project that crosses the Missouri River.

The Dakota Access Pipeline

The Dakota Access Pipeline, a $3.8 billion project, would move about half a million barrels of crude oil per day, traverse four states, cross the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and connect to other pipelines in Illinois. The Army Corps of Engineers estimates the project will create up to 12,000 construction jobs. It will provide millions in state and local revenues during the construction phase and an estimated $129 million annually in property and income taxes: an estimated $50 million annually in property taxes and nearly $74 million in sales taxes to the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois to support services such as schools, roads, and emergency services.[i]

Dakota Access Pipeline Route

(Standing Rock Indian Reservation is shown in orange)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline

Regulatory Authority

The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (18 CFR Parts 341-349) provides the authority for oil pipeline transportation service by a common carrier. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (49 CFR Parts 190-199) provides the regulations to ensure safe movement of the crude oil. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers grants the permits necessary for crossing jurisdictional waters of the United States and the state public utility agencies provide the permits to construct the pipeline within their states.[ii]

In securing the permits and complying with comments received during the process, the developers of the Dakota pipeline made 141 route changes to avoid disturbance of identified sites on private lands.[iii] Further, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reviewed over 1,200 pages of environmental and cultural analysis and consulted with 55 American Indian tribes nearly 400 times before granting the required permit. In fact, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stated in an environmental assessment that Energy Transfer Partners “developed response and action plans, and will include several monitoring systems, shut-off valves, and other safety features to minimize the risk of spills and reduce…any potential damages.”[iv]

Despite all that preparatory work, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe sought to block completion of the project through the federal court system, arguing that it had not been properly consulted during the more than two-year permitting process. Two separate federal courts reviewed the tribe’s concerns and both determined that adequate attention was given to the issues by the federal government.[v]

Obama Administration Intervenes

Despite 99.98 percent of the pipeline being on private lands with all the rights-of-way secured, the Obama Administration (Army Corps of Engineers, Interior Department, Justice Department) intervened to halt construction over the portion of the pipeline that would cross the Missouri River. While the pipeline company continued with construction elsewhere and the pipeline is now 77 percent constructed, it will not meet its original completion date of the end of this year.[vi]

The Obama Administration is continuing to use delaying tactics that are costing the company millions. According to the pipeline company, the government-imposed delays on construction have cost it almost $100 million already.[vii] It is estimated that the company would lose $1.4 billion in its first year of delays if it were to continue. Even a temporary or limited injunction would have devastating long and short term impacts on the project.[viii]

The Obama Administration has put future energy infrastructure projects at risk because its action in upending this project sends a signal to companies seeking to invest in U.S. infrastructure that despite spending time and money on an onerous regulatory process, the project may be re-reviewed in midstream and possibly shut down. No company would invest billions of dollars given this kind of uncertainty.

What is most troubling is that there are 14 pipelines that currently cross the Missouri River, including nine that carry oil or petroleum products. Further, the proposed crossing of the Dakota pipeline across the Missouri River was chosen because a natural gas pipeline and a high-voltage electric transmission line already cross there.

Riots Ensue

Along with damaging the rule of the law, President Obama has made an already volatile situation worse.

In North Dakota, cars have been burned, explosive projectiles have been launched, shots have been fired, and hundreds of people have been arrested. The majority (92 percent) arrested have been from out of state (from Vermont to Florida to California), according to the National Sheriff’s Association.[ix] Along the pipeline’s route in Iowa, millions of dollars of construction equipment has been destroyed[x] and these destructive protests continue.

Inauguration Day May Change the Outcome

President-Elect Donald Trump has not announced a public position on the pipeline, but it is believed that he would support continuing the project. President-Elect Trump said he would reduce the federal government’s role in energy and environmental policy, while encouraging more infrastructure projects including pipelines to better connect production with markets and consumers.[xi] He has campaigned on removing President Obama’s environmental regulations, naming the Clean Water Act, which gives the federal government jurisdiction over the Dakota Access Pipeline, as one of the regulations at the top of his list.[xii] Further, he is also a proponent of increasing oil and natural gas production on federal lands.

Conclusion

Private companies do not spend large amounts of time and money frivolously.  They identify a need, conceive a solution, and establish a goal for attaining it through careful study and planning.  They commit to years of regulatory hearings, testimony, proceedings, and detailed reports by the company and by federal, state, and local officials.  Only after all those steps have been undertaken and clearances granted do private companies commit to a project and begin construction. In return, they expect the rule of law to be upheld.

President Obama has made the Dakota Access Pipeline unnecessarily politicized. The President’s violation of the rule of law has made things worse and is resulting in escalating costs for the Dakota Access Pipeline. Those costs will make crude oil more expensive to transport, which must be the desire of the Obama Administration. A Trump Administration will surely agree to the pipeline’s completion through recognition of the rule of law and reject the overreach of the Obama Administration’s energy and environmental regulations.

---

[i] Energy Transfer, The Route, http://www.daplpipelinefacts.com/

[ii] Dakota Access Pipeline Project, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT GRASSLAND AND WETLAND EASEMENT CROSSINGS, December 2015, https://www.fws.gov/uploadedFiles/DAPL%20Easements%20Draft%20EA%20%2012.17.15.pdf

[iii] Washington Post, The Dakota Access debate has been dangerously blown out of proportion, November 16, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-dakota-access-debate-has-been-dangerously-blown-out-of-proportion/2016/11/16/2b704c56-ab83-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35_story.html

[iv] Popular Mechanics, The Dakota Pipeline Controversy Explained, November 1, 2016, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a23658/dakota-pipeline-protests/

[v] Daily Caller, Oil Market Downturn May Doom the Dakota Pipeline, November 16, 2016, http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/16/report-oil-market-downturn-might-doom-the-dakota-pipeline/

[vi] Real Clear Energy, Dakota Access Pipeline is No Cultural or Environmental Threat, November 4, 2016,

http://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2016/11/04/dakota_access_pipeline_is_no_cultural_or_environmental_threat_110104.html

[vii] The Des Moines Register, Trump’s win could be a victory for Dakota Access pipeline, November 16, 2016, http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2016/11/15/trump-win-whats-future-dakota-access-pipeline/93894838/

[viii] Inside Climate News, Dakota Access Opponents Thinking Bigger, Aim to Halt Entire Pipeline, October 11, 2016, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11102016/dakota-access-opponents-think-bigger-aim-halt-pipeline-standing-rock-sioux-keystone

[ix] National Sheriff’s Association, NSA STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT OBAMA’S COMMENTS ON PIPELINE MILITANTS, November 2, 2016, https://www.facebook.com/Nationalsheriffsassociation/posts/10154750941169623

[x] U.S. Chamber of Commerce, President Obama Just Made the Dakota Pipeline Situation Worse, November 2, 2016, https://www.uschamber.com/above-the-fold/president-obama-just-made-the-dakota-access-pipeline-situation-worse

[xi]Bloomberg, Trump Win Revives Keystone Hopes, Boosts Dakota Access Outlook, November 9, 2016, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-09/trump-win-revives-keystone-hopes-boosts-dakota-access-outlook

[xii] Time, Trump hasn’t laid out a policy on the pipeline—but the answer is clear, November 9, 2016, http://time.com/4565345/dakota-access-pipeline-donald-trump/

The post Dakota Pipeline: Obama Administration Violates Rule of Law appeared first on IER.

5 Lead Generation Ideas to Help You Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rates

Posted by lkolowich

It’s been years since the power’s shifted away from marketers and advertisers and in favor of Internet consumers. Now more than ever, people are empowered to choose their own experiences online. They’re actively avoiding ad content — and instead of living by advertisers’ rule books, they’re deciding what to click on, what to read, what to download, and what to buy … and what not to.

And they have a lot of choices.

When inbound marketers like us are looking to generate more leads from our website, we need to think not just about how to capture people’s attention, but how to capture it in a way that makes people want to learn more from us. A smart lead generation strategy includes creating valuable offers and experiences that fit seamlessly into the context of what people already like and want to do online. It’s the consumer’s world; us marketers are just living in it.

People read calls-to-action that say things like “Sign up here!” as basically synonymous with “We’re gonna spam you.” If you’re recycling these same old lead generation tactics over and over again, it’s quickly going to become white noise. But calls-to-action that fit into the context of what a person’s doing already? That’s smart marketing.

If you want to increase the conversion rate on your website, you need to get smart and creative with your lead generation tactics. Asking for blog subscriptions and gating high-quality content like comprehensive guides, ebooks, and whitepapers behind landing pages still works, but you have to be smart about where you’re offering them on your website. And they shouldn’t be your only lead generation plays.

There are many ways to get creative with lead generation to make sure you’re reaping the benefits of the traffic you’re working so hard to get. Here are some lead generation ideas for B2B and B2C marketers to try. Test them out, tweak them according to your audience’s preferences, and share your own ideas you have in the comments.

1) Put your calls-to-action in people’s natural eye path.

CTA placement can have a profound effect on the number of leads you’re generating from your site. And yet, not many marketers are spending a whole lot of time thinking about, testing, and tweaking CTA placement to optimize their conversions. Many claim that as long as they place their primary CTA above the fold, they’re good to go. (Side note: Even though putting primary CTAs above the fold is often considered a best practice, even that is still up for debate.)

Start your CTA placement tests by putting them where people’s eyes naturally go on a webpage. An eyetracking study found that when people read a webpage, we naturally start by looking in the upper lefthand corner of the page, and then move our eyes in an F-shaped pattern.

[Image credit: Nielsen Norman Group]

Here’s what that looks like:

[Image credit: Envato Studio]

You can capitalize on this natural eye path by placing important information in these key spots. Here’s an example of what that might look like on a website:

[Image credit: Envato Studio]

Notice how the business name is placed in the top left, which is where a person would look first. The navigation bar takes over the #2 spot, followed by the value proposition at #3 and the primary CTA at #4.

Does this order look familiar to you? When you’re browsing the web, you might have noticed that many of them put the primary CTA in the top right corner — in that #2 spot. Here are a few real-life examples:

[Prezi’s homepage]

[Uber’s homepage]

[BarkBox’s homepage]

In the last example from BarkBox, you’ll notice that the secondary CTAs still follow that F-pattern.

Keep this in mind when you’re placing your CTAs, especially on your homepage and your other popular webpages — and don’t be afraid to experiment based on how it makes sense for your own marketing story should be told.

2) Use pop-up and slide-in forms the right way.

Pop-ups have been vilified in the last few years — and quite understandably, too. Far too many marketers use them in a way that disrupts people’s experience on their website instead of enhancing it.

But pop-ups do work — and, more importantly, when they’re used in a way that’s helpful and not disruptive, they can be a healthy part of your inbound strategy. So if you’re wondering whether you should be using pop-up forms, the short answer is yes — as long as you use them in an inbound-y way. First and foremost, that means offering something valuable and relevant to the people visiting that site page.

When you’re considering what type of pop-up to use and what action should trigger them, think about how people are engaging with your pages. When someone reads a blog post, for instance, they’re typically going to scroll down the page to read the content. In that case, you might consider using a slide-in box that appears when someone’s scrolled a certain percentage of the way down the page.

Here’s a great example from a post on OfficeVibe’s blog about how managers gain respect. While I was scrolling, a banner appeared at the bottom of the screen offering me a live report of employee engagement — an offer that was perfectly relevant, given the post was aimed at managers.

It felt helpful, not disruptive. In other words, it was a responsible use of a pop-up.

Similarly, someone who’s spending time reading through a product page might find value in a time-based pop-up that appears when a visitor’s been on the page for a certain number of seconds, like this one from Ugmonk:

The most important takeaway here is to align what you offer on a pop-up with the webpage you’re adding it to, and make sure it’s actually adding substantial value.

If you’re looking for a good free tool to get started with inbound-y pop-up forms, I’d recommend you try HubSpot Marketing Free. We built the Lead Flows feature within this free tool to help marketers generate more leads across their entire website without sacrificing user experience.

3) Add anchor texts to old blog posts that align closely with your gated offers.

It’s common for business bloggers to add an end-of-post banner CTA at the end of every one of their blog posts, like this one:

In fact, you might already be including CTAs like this on your own business blog posts. At HubSpot, we include an end-of-post banner CTA on every single one of our posts, and we also add slide-in CTAs to blog posts that prove themselves to convert visitors into leads at a high rate via organic traffic.

But let’s admit it: At first glance, these types of CTAs look a little bit like ads, which can result in banner blindness from our readers. That’s why it’s thanks to a recent study conducted by my colleague Pam Vaughan that our blogging team has added one more, highly effective lead generation tactic to their arsenal: anchor text CTAs.

In Vaughan’s study, she found that anchor text CTAs are responsible for most of our blog leads. On blog posts that included both an anchor text CTA and an end-of-post banner CTA, she found that 47–93% of a blog post's leads came from the anchor text CTA alone, whereas just 6% of the post’s leads came from the end-of-post banner CTA.

What’s an anchor text CTA, you might be wondering? It’s a standalone line text in a blog post linked to a landing page that’s styled as an H3 or an H4 to make it stand out from the rest of the post’s body copy. On HubSpot’s blog, we’ll typically put an anchor text CTA between two paragraphs in the introduction, like this:

What makes anchor text CTAs so effective? Let’s say you search for “press release template” in Google, and you click on the first organic search result — which is currently our blog post about how to write a press release, which I’ve screenshotted above.

As a searcher, the next thing you’d probably do is quickly scan the post to see if it satisfies your search. One of the first things that’ll catch your eye is an anchor text that reads, “Download our free press release template here” — which happens to be exactly what you were looking for when you searched "press release template." There's a pretty good chance you're going to click on it.

This is where relevancy becomes critical. The anchor text CTA works really well in this case because it satisfies the visitor's need right away, within the first few paragraphs of the blog post. The more relevant the anchor text CTA is to what the visitor is looking for, the better it’ll perform. Simply adding an anchor text CTA near the top of every blog post won’t necessarily mean it’ll generate a ton more leads — and frankly, you’ll risk pissing off your loyal subscribers.

If you decide you’d like to experiment with anchor text CTAs, be selective about the posts you add them to. At HubSpot, we typically add them to old posts that rank well in search. We purposely limit our use of anchor text CTAs on brand new posts — because most of the traffic we get to those posts are already leads and some of the biggest fans of our content, whom we want to have the best possible user experience. (You can read more about anchor text CTAs here.)

4) Support the launch of a new campaign with a launch post and other blog posts on related topics.

Every time you launch a new marketing campaign, posting the good news on your blog should be a key part of your launch plan. It’s a great way to let your existing subscribers know what new content, products, and features you’re putting out there, and it also helps introduce these launches to brand-new audiences.

At HubSpot, we’ve found the best strategy for promoting campaigns on the blog is to write one official launch post, followed by a handful of follow-up posts that are relevant to the campaign but are written in the style of a normal blog post. We typically scatter these follow-up posts over the weeks and months following that initial launch.

When done correctly, launch posts and their supporting blog posts have very different formulas:

• A launch post is between 150–300 words long. It includes a captivating introductory paragraph on the general topic or pain point the campaign is about, followed by a paragraph or two describing how the offer can help and a list of 4–6 bullet points on what the offer includes. It includes one or two in-line text CTAs leading to the campaign, followed by a banner CTA at the end of the post.

• A supplemental blog post can take on any post format and length typical of what you’d normally publish on your blog, such as a how-to post, a list-based post, or a curated collection post. It includes an end-of-post banner CTA leading to the campaign, and an anchor text CTA in the introduction, if applicable.

Let me show you an example. Earlier this year, HubSpot partnered with Iconosquare to write an ebook on how to use Instagram for business. A few days after we launched the offer online, we published a launch post on HubSpot’s Marketing Blog specifically promoting it to our own audience. Here’s what that launch post looked like:

Notice it has a brief introduction of the topic, an introduction of the ebook as a helpful resource, a bulleted list of what’s inside the ebook, two in-line text CTAs pointing toward the ebook, and an end-of-post banner CTA.

Once we published that initial post, we published a series of follow-up blog posts about the same topic — in this case, Instagram for business — that supported the launch, but promoted it much more subtly. These posts covered topics like:

• “17 of the Best Brands on Instagram Right Now”
• “How to Edit Instagram Photos: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Instagram Filters & More”
• “48 Instagram Stats That'll Help You Improve Your Posting Strategy”

In each of these cases, we used keyword research to find long-tail keyword phrases related to our offer topic, and then wrote blog posts related to those highly searched terms and included CTAs to our offer.

The goal here? Both to expose our own audience to more content related to the offer and to expose our offer to a new audience: specifically, people who were searching for related topics on search engines, as we’ve found visitors who find our posts through organic search tend to convert at higher rates.

When you’re planning out your next campaign, be sure to include both a launch post and supportive, follow-up blog posts like these — and plan them all out using a blog editorial calendar like the simple one HubSpot’s blogging team uses with Google Calendar.

5) Use social media strategically for lead generation.

Top-of-the-funnel marketing metrics like traffic and brand awareness isn’t all social media is good for. It can still be a helpful — not to mention low-cost — source for lead generation.

In addition to promoting new blog posts and content to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social sites, be sure to regularly post links to blog posts and even directly to the landing pages of offers that have historically performed well for lead generation. You’ll need to do a lead generation analysis of your blog to figure out which posts perform best for lead generation.

When you link directly to landing pages, be sure the copy in your social posts sets the expectation that clicking the link will send people to a landing page, like Canva did in this Facebook post:

Contests are another way to generate leads from social. Not only are they fun for your followers, but they can also teach you a whole lot about your audience while simultaneously engaging them, growing your reach, and driving traffic to your website.

In addition to posting links to lead generation forms, you’ll also want to make sure you’re using the real estate for lead generation that’s available to you on the social networks that you’re using. On Facebook for example, use the feature available for Pages that lets you put a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook Page. It can help drive more traffic from your Facebook Page to lead generation forms like landing pages and contact sheets.

Here are more lead generation tips for Facebook, and for Twitter.

In addition to optimizing your webpages and social presence for leads, always be looking for opportunities to increase the traffic of your highest-converting pages by optimizing these pages for the keywords they're already ranking for, and linking to these pages internally and externally.

I hope this list has helped spark some ideas for lead generation tactics to test for your own audience. If you’ve tried any of the tactics I’ve listed above, tell us about your experiences in the comments — and feel free to add more ideas to the list.

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Backlinks from Client Sites, Sites You Own, Widgets, & Embedded Content: How to Maximize Benefits & Avoid Problems - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

When it comes to certain kinds of backlinks, avoiding penalties can be a real gray area. How can you earn the benefits without gaining the scrutiny of Google? In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand will teach you which rules to follow to keep you safe and on the up-and-up, all while improving your link profile.

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 a question we see a lot here at Moz, around what you should do with websites that you maybe design or build or do work for, your clients' websites if you're an agency or consultant, or a web designer or builder, sites that you own but are not your primary website, and widgets and embeds, blogrolls, all these kinds of things where you control the link infrastructure, or could control it, and should you.

I think one of the challenges here is to understand that many folks have recognized that, over the years, widgets, embeds, links from client websites have gotten other sites penalized, potentially even your sites penalized over the years, because you had all these links that you control pointing back to places, and to Google that can look really sketchy. So I want to talk through some best practices about how you can get link benefit and value from these places without getting yourself into trouble.

The challenge

All right. The challenge here is let's say that I own sneakerobsessed.com, but it is not my primary website, or maybe it's a client's website. But I do own sneakysneakers.com, and I'm thinking to myself, "Gosh, you know the fact that I control, I have the login for the admin here, the site owner, or me, would be fine with linking from these pages to these pages. What should I do there? I don't want to get into trouble. But I would love to get some benefit, and I think that these links could help me. Should I:

A. Add a link from every page here to a bunch of pages here or to my homepage?

B. Should I link to a variety of my pages, like take a few of these and link them to my homepage, take a few others and link to some internal pages?

C. Should I use a single page on this website to link back to maybe my homepage?

The answer is kind of, it depends. It depends.

My recommendations

Client websites

If it is a client website or a site you've done work for, a site you designed or built, or your agency did, if you have clientdomain.com, what I'm going to suggest is that you take a page, the About page or a page you specifically built like About This Site, and you link to that page from the footer or the sidebar or the header. It's kind of one of those things that gets us linked to from a lot of pages. It's like the About page or the Contact page or the Privacy Policy, those kinds of things would get on clientdomain.com. You make that the only page where you intentionally specifically link back to your domain. You essentially have some blurb about, "Here are the details about the designer or developer, the technologies used on this website," those kinds of things. "If you would like to get in touch with the creator of this website, it is these folks over here," and that points over to you. That means you essentially have a site-wide link to one page, which is flowing a lot of link equity to that single page on your client's website, and that link is pointing over to you. This is very unlikely to be penalized. It's very likely to draw in clicks. It has all these beneficial properties.

Site(s) you own

For sites that you own, so myothersite.com and mymainsite.com, what I'm going to suggest here is that you don't have an intentional specific link strategy like, "Okay, one out of three pages I'm going to have a link. I'm going to have them link to these pages in particular. I'm going to have the anchor text always be this." Don't set up that kind of policy or process. Instead, I want you to focus on providing visitor value. Reference things on your main site when they are relevant to content on your other site, and this should happen naturally and organically.

Anytime you're referencing other content you've created or things that you've done, or recognition that you have, or someone else from your organization, you would naturally link over here. That's the way you should play it, not with some specific process and checklist. Anything that matches a very standard pattern is going to be easily recognized by Google, and that can get you into trouble.

Blogrolls, syndicators, etc.

With blogrolls and syndicators and those type of sites, it's a little less stringent, because blogrolls and syndicators have these unique attributes of basically saying it is the right thing to do for a blogroll when it exists usually on one of the sidebars of a blog, sometimes the blog's homepage, sometimes every page of a blog, it's usual for those to be kind of site-wide style links that always point back to the other blogs' websites' homepage or blog pages. That's okay here too. That is not a big problem.

The only time you get into real trouble is if that blogroll is essentially just a paid manipulation. It's technically a blog network. It's not that you're being editorially endorsed by someone else. They're only linking to you because you're linking to them. You get into that reciprocity challenge. That's not to say you should never link to anyone who has you in their blogroll either. It's just that this has to look natural and editorial to Google, or you can get in trouble.

Syndicators, by the way, it's okay to link from every syndicated piece of content back to the original piece of content. In fact, that's the way it should be. If you do your own syndication, like I do sometimes on Medium, where I put up my blog posts that I've already put on moz.com/rand on medium.com/randfish, then you should have each of those link back to their original pieces, and that's just fine.

Widgets & embeds

For widgets and embeds, things get a little dicier, and this is actually where we see a ton of penalties. Not to say that people don't have problems with their client sites too a lot of the time, but widgets and embeds have been particularly taken to task by Google in the recent past.

So the idea here is that you have this piece of content here that's being embedded from your site. So Sneaker Obsessed, maybe the guys there went to Sneaky Sneakers. They saw a data graph of Nike shoes versus Adidas shoes sales over the last 12 months, and they were like, "Oh, man. I really want to show that. That's awesome." In fact, there's a little "embed this graph onto your own website." So they took that, and they put it on there.

More dangerous

You get into more dangerous territory with this type of thing when in the link between here there's:

• Keyword-matching anchor text
• No opt-out option, meaning there's no way to say, "I don't want to include the link to the original"
• When visitors are very unlikely to click that link; when there's no sort of, "Oh, why would I ever click on the attributed link from the embed?"
• Remotely controlled via JavaScript, meaning you can remotely update this link and anchor text, that gets real sketchy.
• Widget's purpose feels like it exists only for links, like it's not particularly useful, there's not a clear reason why this is a widget instead of just a graphic that other people can use or content they can syndicate, why make it a widget as opposed to something like a graph whose data can change, or an interactive content element, or a video player, or something like that?
• Any sort of payment or discounts that you offer or coercion to get people to embed it gets you into more dangerous territory.

Less dangerous

You're much less likely to have problems if you:

• Keep that anchor text branded or omitted entirely. It's non-branded anchor text. It's just your brand name, or it's very limited. It just says "Data Via," and via is the link itself.
• Opt-out of the link is available, meaning that someone could say, "Yeah, I want to embed that. Include a link back to sneakysneakers.com? No. No, thank you."
• There should be a compelling reason to click.
• That embed is static.
• It's not controlled by JavaScript.
• The widget feels like it's reference-focused, so there's actually some value there.
• Only embedded intentionally by those who are naturally and editorially choosing to include it.

That will keep you safe.

Hopefully, you will not encounter these problems. I think if you follow these rules, you'll be in the safe zone, and you'll also be benefiting from the link value that these can provide. 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

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Featured Snippets: A Dead-Simple Tactic for Making Them Stick

Posted by ronell-smith

Dr. Pete throwing down at MozCon 2015, flexin' in his retro Gatorade shirt

At MozCon 2015, Dr. Pete delivered a gem that perked up my ears when he discussed Google's featured snippets during his talk, "Surviving Google: SEO in 2020":

"Let's say you're No. 5 in a competitive query, and you're trying to get from No. 5 to No.1. That is incredibly difficult; that takes a lot of money, a lot of links, a lot of authority. You might be able to jump past No. 1 to No. 0 with this just by matching the question better. So it may actually be easier to get from No. 5 to No. 0 than it is to get from No. 5 to No. 1 ... Be a better match. Be a better answer to the question. It's good for users."

Something about those 98 words perked my ears up, especially the last two sentences.

"Be a better answer to the question. It's good for users."

Those words rolled around in my head for months, though their impact wouldn't be felt until even later, when I began to see how prevalent featured snippets had become.

More than a year later, I'm now more convinced than ever that most brands should be making the attainment of featured snippets a priority.

Why?

Try as they might, most sites don't stand a chance of making it to the No.1 position in the SERPs. And today, with so much priority given to ads at the top of the page, above the organic results — not to mention the fact that most people don't recognize ads from organic results — even those who do reach the coveted position have to feel as though they've secured a pyrrhic victory.

In the year-plus since the presentation, rich answers have grown significantly, as depicted by the graph below from Stone Temple Consulting:

And in the span, a number of teams and individuals have made it their charge to better decipher featured snippets, specifically regarding what seems to influence their presence for certain queries, what types of snippets there are, how to optimize your content to make it more likely that you receive one, and what Google is likely looking for when a snippet is ultimately featured.

(For in-depth background information on featured snippets, see the Related Content section at the bottom of the post.)

But not a whole lot has been written on how to keep featured snippets once your brand has one. This fact hit me like a ton of bricks during MozCon 2016, when I listened to Rob Bucci of GetStat during his presentation Taking the Top Spot: How to Earn More Featured Snippets.

This post, which is a wellspring of some comments Bucci shared near the end of his presentation, will be focused very narrowly on how to keep a Featured Snippet once your brand has been fortunate enough to receive one.

The fast five 5 Ws of featured snippets

Before we dive into that aspect, let's briefly go over a few specifics, surrounding the nuts and bolts of featured snippets.

• What are they and where do they come from? A featured snippet is the summation of an answer for a web searcher's query, typically taken from a website and includes a link to the site, the page title and the URL, according to GetStat.
• Why should you care? You shouldn't, unless you care about being the top result on the page (snark for the win). Also, since the result can come from any brand on the first page, you have the potential to occupy two positions on page 1.
• Who needs them? Any brand that desires organic reach, visibility, traffic and, yeah, uhm, conversions.
• When do they show up? Any time a query is best answered in list, table, or graph form.

For your brand or any other, however, (a) featured snippets provide you with an easy opportunity to better compete against the competition, (b) can amount to a low-investment/high-reward opportunity, and (c) can give you a leg up on the competition.

Keeping your hard-earned featured snippet

One of the main reasons to attend conferences such as MozCon in person is the potential to hear a nugget of wisdom that would be missed in a recap blog, not properly conveyed in a tweet by an attendee, or glossed over when listening to the video after the event.

For example, Dr. Pete's quote from MozCon 2015 rang clear as a bell when I heard it while sitting in the audience, but I'm not sure I would have noticed it so readily had I simply watched the videos.

During the Q&A that followed Bucci's talk, he was asked about the real value of investing in featured snippets, a particular concern given that, in most cases, Google is serving up the content with very little benefit to the brand that houses it. (Unless the user clicks on the URL at the bottom of the content and visits the website.)

Bucci did far more than answer the question before him, however.

"Let's say I was [trying to teach someone] how to make toast. The snippet is, like, step 1 put the bread in the toaster; step 2, toast the bread; step 3, eat it, right? If I added a fourth or fifth step so that it was truncated in the snippet, i.e., they didn't get the full steps to make toast, people would be more likely to click on it to get the full results. Think about how you can optimize your snippets by making it so that you don't give away the entire farm in your snippet. They have to go through your website to get the information."

This tidbit got my attention for two reasons:

• One of the biggest concerns brands have with regard to investing resources in trying to get a featured snippet is it does very little for the brand if the web searcher does not click on the URL and visit the site. Otherwise, the only entity that benefits to a significant degree is Google.
• Churn, whereby brands earn and then lose a snippet, is a very real concern, too. Research by Stone Temple Consulting found that more than 55% of the queries that showed featured snippets in January 2016 "either didn’t show a featured snippet in July 2015, OR shows a different URL for the featured snippet than it did in July 2015."

Image courtesy of Stone Temple Consulting, Google’s Featured Snippets: Automated Continuous Improvement

How to smartly invest in featured snippets

By applying the logic in Bucci's quote, your brand can employ what I call next-level thinking.

Instead of simply thinking "How do I get a featured snippet?", think "How do I keep a featured snippet?" This is especially important since, as has been reported by STC, Bucci, and others, Google is likely using engagement metrics (e.g., clicks on the URL) as a factor in determining churn.

"By crafting your snippet content in a way that encourages people to click through to your site for the full detail, you can raise your CTR on that SERP," says Bucci. "That's the key thing."

As you can see from the result below, this result, drawn from the No.1 result on the page, is unlikely to warrant a click since all the needed information is right there for the taking.

However, in the result below, the web searcher will have to click the URL and visit the owner of the content's website to see the full list.

The important point to delivering a result that's churn-resistant, says Bucci, is to think strategically.

"The biggest recommendation I made that I think people are only now starting to pay attention to how to strategically use formatting to A) win snippets and B) create great user experiences on the SERP. People were just focused on getting any old snippet, but my advice was that they should look at the query space and measure the most common snippet formats. From there, they should optimize their snippets to match those formats, because Google is clearly indicating that they want to use those formats within the give."

Bucci made a great point, highlighting how we should pay attention to the formatting and content types — not simply the queries — that consistently show up as featured snippets. This, he says, amounts to Google telling us what they're looking to reward.

Don't overthink it. Dive in.

It's exciting to see brands jump into the fray, beginning to think seriously about featured snippets and how the organic elements can impact their brands.

Dr. Pete, who has remained a passionate advocate for brands taking a serious look at how to get and keep featured snippets, says it's essential that brands build their attainment into their overall process, not use it as a one-off tactic.

"I think the first step is to think in terms of questions, and build part of your keyword research around that. In natural language search, questions are increasingly common. Which questions are part of your conversion path? Don't discount them just because they're early in the funnel or part of the research phase. Find out if those questions are showing snippets and then think about ways to use those snippets as a teaser to draw people into your content and, hopefully, your funnel. Once you're ranking on page 1, it's about shaping your content to better answer the question. I think it helps to take an 'inverted pyramid' approach — lead with your most compelling question and a summary of your content, and then dive into the details. This makes for better snippets and grabs short attention spans."

One of the best ways to get started with featured snippets is by taking a step-by-step approach so that everyone on the team knows what you're going after, why, and its likely impact to the brand.

The graphic below is as specific and as detailed as you need to be to get started.

Image source: Stone Temple Consulting

Remember, though, like all aspects of online marketing, the endeavor will be iterative. What you gain, you might lose. But the process is invaluable.

You've still created something worthwhile

Hopefully, I've shared at least one small tidbit of information that has you excited about adding the attainment of featured snippets to your content marketing strategy.

For those of you who might be on the fence, wondering if the potential reward warrants the expense, Dr. Pete's words should nudge you in the right direction.

"I think content that answers questions is naturally compelling, which is what I like about optimizing for featured snippets ... Content that answers questions succinctly provides real value and builds a base of value for your visitors, regardless of where they arrive from. Even if you lose the featured snippet, you've built something useful."

It bears repeating:

"Even if you lose the featured snippet, you've built something useful."

Dr. Pete continued:

"Think of featured snippets as much like organic ranking — they aren't something Google awards you and then lets you keep until a new winner comes along. Featured snippets are generated by the algorithm in real time, just like organic rankings. You have to keep competing for them."

Related reading:

• Ranking #0: SEO for Answers and How to Rank on Google Home, by Dr. Pete
• The Definitive Guide to Google’s Rich Answers (part of a three-post series), by Stone Temple Consulting
• How to Appear in Google's Answer Boxes, by Rand Fishkin
• How To Get More Featured Snippets, by GetStat

Has your brand experimented with featured snippets? If so, what's been the result?

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Remember, Moz Pro will help you find and track featured snippets, as well as identify opportunities for acquiring them!

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