Whiteboard Friday

Using Your Niche's Demand Distribution Curve to Improve Your SEO, Social, and Content Strategy

It's a new year, and that means it's time shift into some new habits regarding your keyword research. Rather than simply targeting marketing blasts at either the in-demand or the long tail, you may want to think about carefully targeting your tactics to the shape of your niche's keyword demand distribution curve. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand details four steps to using these curves to support and improve your existing strategies.

How to Build the Right Traffic Metrics Dashboard for 2016

What you measure is what you're able to improve. Setting yourself up for success involves measuring your traffic metrics the right way, so you can identify areas to work on and implement the right actions. In the first Whiteboard Friday of 2016, Rand explains what you need to include when building your own traffics metrics dashboard in the new year.

Giving Searchers a Reason to Prefer Your Brand

It's the season of giving, and that notion extends to search! Brand preferences have an almost tangible impact on several levels, from consumer affinity to a rankings boost on Google. In this holiday edition of our now-traditional White​beard​ Friday, Rand explains why it's important to keep brand recognition at the forefront of your strategy, and offers up a framework on how to get started on giving searchers a reason to prefer your brand.

What You Need to Know About Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs)

You may have heard the term "AMPs" thrown around lately. What exactly are Accelerated Mobile Pages, what do they mean for search, and how can you prepare for it all? In this week's ​British​ Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow and Tom Anthony of Distilled lay out all the important details.

6 Techniques to Dramatically Upgrade the Quality of Your Presentation

Presentations are so much better when your audience isn't bored — when they're engaged with what you're saying, and attentive, and wowed. But what's the secret formula to giving a great talk? In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand will help you boost your presentations to the next level with six tips that have spelled success for him.

Mobile Web vs Mobile Apps: Where Should You Invest Your Marketing?

Mobile's been a hot topic for a while now. We know it's not something to be ignored, but when it comes to different mobile mediums, it can be tricky to determine where to focus your efforts. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand goes over the differences between marketing via mobile apps and mobile web, examines some criteria that can help guide your decision, and speculates about the future of the mobile world in general.

How to Use Hosted Blog Platforms for SEO & Content Distribution

Where do you host your content? Is it on your own site, or on third-party platforms like Medium and LinkedIn? Rand goes over the boons and pitfalls of using hosted blog platforms in this week's Whiteboard Friday.

20 Attributes that Influence a Link's Value

When it comes to the link building process, there’s a lot to keep track of — and that process today is pretty different from what it was a few short years ago. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand scores 20 different attributes that can influence a link's value based on whether or not they still matter in 2015/2016.

How to Prioritize SEO Tasks & Invest in High-Value Work Items

One thing we can all agree on: there's a ​lot​ to think about when it comes to your SEO tasks. Even for the most organized among us, it can be really difficult to prioritize our to-dos and make sure we're getting the highest return on them. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand tackles the question that's a constant subtext in every SEO's mind.

Recovering the Data Google Has Hidden Away

It's no secret that Google keeps a lot of secrets. From keyword data to link data to traffic data (and surely more), there's a lot that we could benefit from — if they'd only share it! Since that's not likely to happen anytime soon, Rand takes us through various ways to access that all-important data in this week's Whiteboard Friday.

How to Write for the Web—a New Approach for Increased Engagement

16%. That's the percentage of people who read everything you write word-for-word. That number hasn't changed in two decades, which tells us that we've never really learned how to write for the web. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Dan Petrovic illustrates a new approach to writing for the web to increase reader engagement, and offers some tools and tips to help along the way.

Link Building Outreach in a Skeptical World

Outreach. It's the most important part of the link building process—and also the most grueling. Good personalized outreach is impossible to scale, and it's easy to fall into a rut. What can you do to maximize your success rate and to stand out from the crowd? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand offers up methods of bartering value to earn genuine links, catching your target's attention, and actionable advice on what to include in your outreach correspondence.