This is my summary of top 10 take-away, action items from Search Marketing Expo (SMX) in San Jose, California in March 2018. The conference was excellent and gave me many things to improve organic and paid search marketing.

1. TOP 10 TAKE-
AWAYS FROM
SMX WEST
In no particular order
By Jimmy Smith
JimmySmith.org
Based on notes from
Search Marketing Expo
March 2018
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2. 1. USE ADWORDS AT ALL STAGES OF THE CONVERSION
FUNNEL
From Advanced AdWords Training by Brad Geddes
• He shows how you can essentially run drip campaigns via AdWords
– Reaching people through Google search and Google’s display network, YouTube, etc.
• Using AdWords at all stages of the conversion funnel it becomes like a Marketing Automation platform
– E.g. An abandoned shopping cart campaign could largely be built in AdWords
• We need to serve different ads for different stages of the buying funnel
– Especially true for long buying cycles like B2B software
• Also, due to long buying cycle, we should consider changing attribution model for Hilti
– Currently we use the default, Last Click
– Position based seems to make sense for most
• Use audience lists effectively
– Visitors to a product page, the shopping cart, etc.
– Create an audience list of employees to exclude
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3. 2. SILO-ING CONTENT CAN TRIPLE YOUR ORGANIC TRAFFIC
From Bruce Clay, Founder & President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
• Siloes include: content, hierarchy/organization, navigation, and internal linking
• Both Google and actual users want a well-organized structure that is obvious, that shows expertise, and is
easily understood and followed.
• If you’re a car site, and your main categories are cars, trucks, SUVs, sports cars. Where is Ford? All of them.
– Thus Google will not perceive you to be an expert on Ford.
– If you have a Ford content silo, however, then Google sees you as a Ford expert
• When you link everything to everything then it is not a hierarchy.
– In a company org chart, every employee doesn’t report to every other employee.
– You need a clear parent child relationship in organizations and in website content
• The primary search path used by your audience should always be reflected in your content hierarchy
• If you don’t know how people search, then you can’t do siloes
– So find out how they search. What keywords they use. In what order they use them.
• A common main menu will have Product, Services, Tools, Blog. But that’s not how people search
– Should be flipped with common searched items on top and Product, Services, Tools, Blog is under that
– See main menu at https://www.bruceclay.com
• Many of Bruce Clay’s clients have tripled organic traffic within six weeks of implementing siloes
• Tool to map your site to see links graphically and presence or not of siloes: https://sitebulb.com
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5. 3. USE STRUCTURED MARK UP DATA TO IMPROVE SEO
RANKINGS AND CLICK THRU
From Alexis Sanders, Technical SEO Account Manager, Merkle
• Google offers improved snippets thru SD for 26 item types
• For eCommerce sites, rich results will outperform regular listing
• Structured data is information with a high degree of organization
• Rich results (with data in snippet from structured data) get much
better click thru rates
From Marcus Tober, Searchmetrics Inc.
• SD can help populate the Google Knowledge Panel
• Structured data increases rankings and click thru rates
Consider using structured data:
• On product pages, employee bios, and About Us
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“Structured data is a standardized format for providing
information about a page and classifying the page content; for
example, on a recipe page, what are the ingredients, the cooking
time and temperature, the calories, and so on.” – Google

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7. 4. IMPROVE CONTENT TO BE FEATURED
IN A GOOGLE ANSWER BOX
From Chanelle Harbin, SEO Manger, Disney ABC Television Group
• Featured snippets (aka answer boxes) are search results that appear
at the top of Google’s results aiming to answer a user’s question
• 10 blue links are becoming extinct so it’s important to adapt
• To get into an answer box:
– Answers to specific questions
– Answers in copy at beginning of paragraph
– Provide steps (lists) for the user to follow
– Provide a direct answer to the question
• Identify question search queries (what, when, where, why and how)
related to your products and industry
• Are you set up to win when people ask what your product costs?
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8. 5. WATCH OUT FOR THE USUAL SUSPECTS THAT EFFECT
QUALITY SCORE
From Glenn Gabe, President, G-Squared Interactive
• “User happiness” is extremely important to Google and sites/pages
that make users happy usually win in SEO
• The combination of strong user experience (UX) and high-quality
content makes users, and Google, happy
• Wouldn’t it be great if Google provided a thorough guide that explained
what they deem high-quality versus low-quality?
– They have. It’s called Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines
• What’s “Low-Quality”? Among other things, the usual suspects are:
– Thin content
– Aggressive or deceptive advertising
– UX barriers (difficult to navigate menus, pop-ups, usability issues)
• Large ads above the fold, and sometimes large images and other
elements, that push down main content will negatively affect quality
• When quality scores go down, rankings go down as well
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9. 6. KEYWORD INSIGHTS CAN HELP DEVELOP MESSAGING,
PERSONAS, CUSTOMER JOURNEYS, AND ENGAGEMENT
From Ken Shults, VP of Strategic Innovation, BrightEdge
• B2B researchers do an average of 12 searches before engaging with a brand site
• Gathering insights from search behavior can help develop messaging, define personas, map
customer journeys and drive deeper engagements with your audience
• SEO is not something you do. It is what happens when you do everything else right.
• Data and Insights, NOT your org chart, should drive content strategy
• The website should reflect who the customers are, not who the company is.
• “If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should
use their language.” David Ogilvy (as true today as 50 years ago)
• It Use keyword research data to explain what your persona does
• Develop a “Context Matrix” (portfolio or suite of content) aligned to target personas/keywords at
targeted times in the customer journey
• Recommended framework to help SEO not be an after thought
– Develop an information architecture (IA) based on customer data and insights
– When request for new content comes in, where does it fit in the IA?
– It can also be a good part of a content audit to find gaps in your content
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10. • Example IA, Customer Journey, and
Content Audit / Gap Analysis
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11. 7. KNOW SOCIAL MEDIA’S STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
Nate Elliott, Principal, Nineteen Insights
• Social traffic volume to eCommerce sites and spend levels are relatively low
• Sequencing ads, first a brand awareness ad (priming), then CTA ad improves effectiveness
• Optimize social media for business metrics, not for engagement metrics
• Facebook has research showing no correlation between engagement and business
outcomes
• Trek bikes had more social media engagement than ever in 2016, “but sales were soft”
• Social team should focus on same metrics as product teams
• Only 16% of CMOs have data to prove the value of social media
• Engagement is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself
Caitlin Jeansonne, Social Media Director, MMI Agency, @QCait
• Launch every social media campaign with a test/learning plan: Fail fast + fail forward
• Build in flexibility and room to experiment. Chart your course with data
• Make integration a priority. Social team should sit together with SEO and digital marketing
team
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“We have proven the impact of
social media quantitatively.”
Source: The CMO Survey,
August 2017

12. 8. SOMETIMES THE BEST PRACTICES AREN’T THE BEST –
TEST EVERYTHING
From Laura Lippay, Organic Search & Technical Optimization Lead, Netflix
• While united in many areas, SEO experts still disagree on a lot of topics
• SEO isn’t one size fits all, so avoid blanket statements.
• Many SEO practices depend on the situation at hand. Always consider the situation at hand!
• Netflix did many of the SEO best practices and saw no detectable ranking or traffic changes
• Vendors kept giving Netflix best practice advice, but the advice didn’t make sense for Netflix
– and those consultants eventually got fired
• Any time someone says “I think x” what they’re really meaning is “We should test x”
• If you don’t follow best practices, you can’t arbitrarily do other things, non-best-practices should be a result of
testing and data
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13. 9. IMPROVE EXPERIENCE, AUTHORITATIVENESS, & TRUST
(E-A-T) WITH LINKS AND MENTIONS ON OTHER SITES
From Marie Haynes, Owner, HIS Web Marketing
• Google algorithm updates
– Have closed SEO loopholes like “SEO Content”
– Are designed to improve quality and experience for users
• E-A-T is largely based on links and mentions on authoritative
websites
• How to Improve E-A-T?
– Get press from news outlets (the bigger the better, i.e.
NYPost, WaPo, etc.)
– Wikipedia mentions
– Forum discussion links can be a good source of EAT
– Get the world talking about how awesome your business is
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14. 10. DON’T MAKE ME THINK AND OTHER BEST PRACTICES
FOR ECOMMERCE OFFERS
From Elizabeth Marsten
• People like free shipping to save money, but also so they don’t have to do math
• Bundles may be a better deal, but they get lower in the results, and it requires people to do math
• The better deals don’t necessarily perform better, it’s the lower barrier entry to deals that do
From Aaron Levy
• Paid media favors stability
– Better ads are better than promotional prices
– Hard $ off in ad got better conversion than percentage off ad
• The simpler the offer, the better the result.
• People don’t want to think and they stink at math
• Understand what your best customers buy first
– E.g. diapers/formula indicates lifespan of baby and kid products
– Find where those purchases come from and target them
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