#there's a lot of concert detail which i may have gotten too in the weeds with
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hearts-hunger · 6 years ago
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I’m Happy at Home || part two
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Missed part 1? Hop on over to my masterlist!
Part Summary: You and Teddy enjoy the concert from backstage, Teddy disco-dancing his heart out just like his father. When the concert is over, the boys find that despite the roaring crowds, they have no bigger fan than your adoring five-year-old.
Pairings: John Deacon x Wife!Reader; dad!deaky
Genre: Fluff
Word Count: 3.2k
Warnings: None!
A/N: Ok lovies, here’s part two! I can’t believe I restrained myself to stick to my Saturday update schedule, because as we know I’m a sucker for validation, but it’s a good discipline and it’ll give me more time to finish the whole fic. I hope you like it!
“That’s Uncle Brian!” Teddy told you, his face lighting up as Brian began playing the opening chords to “We Will Rock You”. Teddy’s smile only got broader as Roger set in on the drums, quickly followed by John’s bassline and Freddie’s vocalizations as he played with the crowd.
“Where’s daddy?” Teddy asked, craning his neck to see through the smoke and flashing lights.
“Right there,” you said, finding him off the drum risers already. If there was one thing that could be counted on during a Queen concert, it was that your husband couldn’t stand to stay in the same place for more than a few seconds. Freddie gallivanted across the stage very noticeably, but if you took your attention from John for a second, he’d be off somewhere else before you noticed he was gone. It had always been something that amused you about him, and Teddy hadn’t yet figured out that there really was no telling where his father would be on stage at any given moment.
When John did find a place to settle for a moment, he’d more than make up for his lack of distance traveled across the stage by dancing. As soon as Freddie started singing, John was bouncing on the balls of his feet, his playing perfectly in time as his whole body moved along to the beat.
“Mud on your face, big disgrace!” Teddy sang with Freddie, his fear of the noise quickly overcome by one of the songs he’d known by heart since he was old enough to talk. He wriggled in your arms to be set down and you obliged, watching him with a smile on your face as he danced and sang every word. He danced just like his father, bending at the knees, jumping and kicking to the beat.
You looked back up as they transitioned to playing “Let Me Entertain You”, seeing John hop from one foot to the other on the drum riser steps. Watching him dance on stage never failed to make you smile like it had done the very first time you’d seen him perform, back when they were still playing pubs. You’d taken to calling him your “bouncy boy”, endeared to the way he put his heart and his body into every single song they played. 
No one had prepared you for how easily your heart would be stolen by another bouncy boy, a little replica of his father down to the bob of his copper brown curls as he danced. If you’d thought John couldn’t keep still to save his life, Theodore Taylor Deacon was ten times worse. Between the two of them they were never lost for energy, always fiddling with something and unable to stay still. Though some days it was a little hard to keep up with them, moments like this reminded you that you wouldn’t have changed your two bouncy boys for the world. 
You watched them happily, Teddy’s adorable laughter at the sheer energy of the concert mingling with the sound of the songs that never failed to amaze you in their beauty and intensity. At some point John stepped off stage to take off his jacket, tossing it to you without really taking his attention from the stage where Freddie was talking to the audience. You didn’t mind, knowing he was in his concert mindset and very little could pull him from it. You caught his jacket and folded it neatly over your arm, happy to help everything go as smoothly for John as you could.
“Can I wear daddy’s jacket?” Teddy asked. You breathed a laugh as you took a look at him, his hair damp with sweat, breathing heavily from his dancing.
“You sure?” you asked. It was always hot backstage even if you weren’t skipping around the whole square footage of it, and you could feel the warmth of John’s body heat still on his jacket. “Might get a little warm.”
“Just for a minute,” he pressed. 
You held the jacket open for him, smiling to yourself as his hands didn’t even reach halfway through the sleeves. The hem was nearly on the ground but Teddy didn’t seem to mind, beaming up at you as he waved a sleeve.
“Do I look like daddy?” he asked.
You felt such adoration for him you thought your heart might burst. “Yes, you do,” you told him. “Just like daddy.”
Teddy grinned and continued to dance, albeit a little slower with the weight of the jacket and the relative calmness of “Killer Queen” that they were playing at the moment. Suddenly, at the end of Brian’s solo, the stage went black; Teddy’s yelp of panic quickly turned to a gasp of delight as he recognized the transition to his very favorite Queen song.
“The machine of a dream!” he sang at the top of his voice as the stage lights flashed back on, his high voice blending with Roger’s raspy vocalization. You could tell Roger was tired; he’d been drumming his heart out as he always did, and drumming and singing at the same time was hard work. You made a mental note to tell Roger how excited Teddy had been to sing along with him, knowing it would make Roger smile.
The stage went black again as the crowd applauded Roger’s drum solo. Green lights dimly lit the stage and you felt a flutter of excitement in your chest as you knew what came next; sure enough, the deep twang of John’s bass strings delivered the first notes of “Get Down, Make Love” and you felt your mind wandering to your post-concert plans with your husband.
As if reading your mind, John looked over towards you as blue lights joined the green on stage, giving you a wink as he played the four notes you’d never been able to associate with anything other than being absolutely wild for your husband since the first time he’d recorded them. The song never failed to put you and John in the mood, and you’d drunkenly confessed that to Freddie one night at a party only to be met by Freddie’s delighted laughter. “That was the intended effect, darling,” he’d said. “I’m glad to know it works.”
It worked, alright; that much you could say for sure, biting your lip as you watched how John moved his hips against his bass and studied how his long fingers danced across the strings. You would have spent the whole song with John holding your rapt attention had it not been for Teddy wrapping his arms around your leg, clinging to you again as the song slowly dissolved into the eerie noise used on the studio version. The main lights went off and stayed off, only the glow of the now slightly sinister rainbow lights traveling over the stage giving it light. You picked Teddy up and held him close, bundled in John’s jacket, rocking him gently as you kissed his forehead. You had to admit that it was a bit unsettling, even for you, as the ghostly wail of the Red Special echoed through the dark.
“It’s kind of scary, mummy,” Teddy said in a small voice, his face buried in your neck to hide from the dark.
You patted his back soothingly. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s just Uncle Brian and Red Special.”
“Where’s daddy?” Teddy asked.
“He’s okay,” you assured him, knowing he was worried. “He’s still on stage. The lights will come on in a minute and you’ll be able to see him.”
A moment later a whistle sounded, Roger coming in strong on the drums to bring the song to its rocking finish. The white lights came back on and you were immediately met by the sight of John bouncing and swiveling on his feet.
“There’s your daddy right there,” you said to Teddy. “See?”
Teddy lifted his head and nodded, the color returning to his face as he saw John was perfectly fine and in fact having a great time. If John was okay and thought it was a good time to dance, then everything must be alright.
Teddy seemed to need a little bit more time to get settled from that fright, though; you trusted your maternal instinct and continued to pat his back to soothe him like you had since he was a baby, holding him close and letting him rest his head on your shoulder again. Thankfully the next song was slow; Brian played piano and you rocked Teddy in time with his playing. You sang along with Freddie, singing “Save Me” like a lullaby to your little boy.
By the time Freddie started playing with the audience after the next song, Teddy was back to his usual exuberant self and happily joined in with the audience’s part of the call and response. You set him down and he mimicked Freddie in his wild gesticulations, the sleeves of John’s jacket flapping adorably with every movement.
The rest of the concert continued without incident, Teddy every bit as invested as the audience through the remaining hour of the show. You had to hold him back from rushing at Freddie when he came backstage after “Tie Your Mother Down”, knowing Freddie was only popping back very quickly to change into a pair of shorts before the next song. Though Freddie didn’t have time to hug and talk to Teddy like you knew both would have liked, he did give Teddy a smile and encourage him to keep dancing as he went back onstage.
Teddy did as Freddie said, dancing his little heart out until the very last song. He looked up at you as the strains of “God Save the Queen” echoed through the arena, recognizing it as the traditional end to Queen’s concert sets. 
“Is that the end, mummy?” he asked. You could barely hear him over the incredibly loud but well-deserved cheers and applause as the boys made their final bows.
“That’s the end,” you agreed. “Look, here they come now.”
Teddy turned when you gestured to the stage, his expression lighting up as his father and his uncles made their way offstage towards him. He took off like a shot towards his father, wrapping his arms around John’s leg. John stepped back a step to steady himself, a little surprised at the greeting, moving his bass out of the way so it wouldn’t hit Teddy.
“How was it?” John asked, a smile playing on his features as he looked down at his boy.
“Amazing!” Teddy gushed. “I was dancing with you the whole time, and it was so loud, and you played so many songs, daddy!”
“Don’t I know it,” John agreed with a chuckle. “You’ve got my jacket, I see.”
Teddy flapped the sleeves for effect. “It’s too big for me.”
John laughed outright. “I think you’re right. Come on, let’s go see mum.”
John pulled the strap of the bass over his head, handing the instrument to Ratty to be put away. He guided Teddy with a protective touch to his shoulder, steering him towards you, and you couldn’t help but smile at your two favorite boys.
“Fancy seeing you here,” John said, drawing close to you. You could tell from his voice alone that he was tired; you ran your hand up and down his arm in an effort to soothe.
“I was off with my boyfriend,” you teased. “But I ditched him to come see you.”
He grinned. “As any proper groupie should do. I’d expect nothing less from the girl who’s been coming to my shows for as long as you have.”
Teddy looked up at the two of you. “What’s a groupie?”
You met each other’s eyes, amusement and surprise warring for dominance as you tried to think of what to say in answer. Thankfully you were rescued by Roger, who scooped Teddy up and set him on his shoulders. 
“You’ll learn all about what groupies are when you’re older, little rock ‘n roll man,” Roger said. Teddy was happy to forget it in favor of chattering on about how loudly he’d sung “I’m in Love With My Car”, which brought a huge grin to Roger’s face as he listened. Roger took Teddy over to see Brian and Freddie at his request, giving you and John a moment’s peace from your energetic little boy.
“How was it?” you asked him. It had seemed perfect from your end, but you knew there was an added layer of perspective John had from actually performing.
“Good, yeah,” he said. “No major hiccups, no broken strings or anything like that. What did you think?”
You smiled. “I thought it was great. ‘Get Down, Make Love’ scared Teddy a bit, but other than that we both loved it.”
John gave you a knowing smirk. “Oh yeah? And what did you think of ‘Get Down, Make Love’, Mrs. Deacon?”
“Other than it making me jealous of your bass?” you ask, giving him a coy smile. “Between your hips and your fingers, I couldn’t help but wish you were playing me instead.”
You twined your fingers with his and give him a kiss; though he responded as he always did in leaning closer to your touch, you could tell he wasn’t nearly as passionate as you were. You pulled back and took his hand in both of yours, noticing the slight tremor there. He was always a bit shaky after shows as he came down from the adrenaline high, and you gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Tired?” you asked.
His grimace was apologetic. “Kind of, sorry. I know we had plans.”
“That’s ok, honey,” you assured him gently. Truth be told you were tired too, and though you could have gladly gone a few rounds in the dressing room if he’d been up for it, you were also perfectly happy to take him home and let the three of you get some rest. “It’ll make next time even better. Let’s get Teddy and head home, how does that sound?”
He gave a sigh of relief. “I’d love that. Thank you.”
You gave him a chaste kiss and brushed his sweat-dampened curls back from his face, smiling up at him as you kept your hand in his and looked over to where Brian, Freddie, and Roger were all watching Teddy demonstrate his dance moves. For three rock ‘n rollers, they always melted the instant Teddy came around and showed their true natures as the huge softies they were at heart. Freddie gave a delighted laugh as Teddy mimicked a signature Mercury move.
“Perfect,” Freddie said. “Better than I do it, even.”
Teddy beamed under the love and attention of his uncles; even though he was shy by nature, just like his father, he was completely at home with Roger, Brian, and Freddie. You leaned closer to John and he put his arm around your waist as you watched the people you loved most in the world.
Teddy yawned and rubbed the too-long sleeve of John’s jacket over his face. “Red Special didn’t sound like a guitar, Uncle Brian.”
Brian chuckled as he picked Teddy up and held him close to his chest. “What did she sound like?”
Teddy rested his head on Brian’s collarbone. “She sounded like a ghost one time and it was scary.”
“Oh no,” Brian said, giving a sympathetic laugh. “I think I know which song you’re talking about. I’m sorry it scared you, little bear.”
Brian had called Teddy “little bear” since the day he’d come to the hospital to see the newest addition to the Deacon family, shyly presenting an astronaut teddy bear as a gift for the baby. You hadn’t told anyone what you were naming your son - Roger firmly denied that it made him tear up to know he was the boy’s namesake, but you knew better - and it had seemed like fate that Brian had brought a teddy bear for him. Too nervous to hold him at first, Brian had tucked the bear next to Teddy in the hospital bassinet. Freddie had said how sweet it was to see the two little bears together, and Brian had taken the name to heart. From then on, Theodore Taylor Deacon had always been Brian’s “little bear”. 
“It’s okay,” Teddy said. “It was only scary for a minute, but then Red Special sounded like Red Special again.”
“Good thing you reminded me not to tighten the strings too much, hm?”
Teddy smiled. “Good thing!”
As Teddy yawned again, you knew it was time to start heading home. Doubtless the boys had plans to go out and party like they usually did after shows, but for your five-year-old, bedtime had long since passed. You eased out of John’s hold and went over to Brian, taking your little boy from him.
“Say goodnight,” you said as he wrapped his arms around your neck.
 “Goodnight,” Teddy said, giving his uncles a little wave. All three smiled and waved back.
“Night, Teddy,” Roger said.
“Thanks for coming to see us,” Freddie added.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Brian said.
Teddy nodded. “Okay.”
John came up behind you and put his arm around your waist. “Night, boys. You’re off to dance the night away, I presume?”
“Roger’s already got a date set up, haven’t you, Rog?” Freddie teased.
Roger grinned. “I have, thank you.”
“Freddie and I are going out to that club we saw last night,” Brian added. “See if we can’t drum up a little fun here in the lovely city of Montreal.”
John smiled. “Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Freddie laughed. “You stuck your hand through a plate-glass window, darling. I think it’s safe to say there’s very little you wouldn’t do.”
John chuckled. “That’s true,” he admitted. “Be safe. We’ll leave the door unlocked for you when you come in.”
“A gentleman, as always,” Roger teased. “What would we do without you?”
“Are you coming home soon, Uncle Rog?” Teddy asked, his voice soft with sleepiness.
Roger looked like he could have melted. “I might have a bit of a sleepover at my friend’s house, but Uncle Brian and Uncle Freddie will come home tonight. And I’ll come home tomorrow.”
“Can we play tomorrow?” Teddy asked.
“To your heart’s content, kiddo,” Roger promised. “So be good for mummy and daddy and get some sleep, okay?”
“Okay,” Teddy agreed.
You shifted Teddy on your hip. “You remember the address?” you asked the boys.
All three of them recited the address of your grandparents’ summer home back to you.
“Let’s hope your memory stays intact when you’re drunk,” John teased.
“Call if you can’t remember it or get in some kind of trouble,” you reminded them, hearing your worried mom voice surface almost involuntarily. They smiled as they recognized your tone, one you’d used even before having Teddy as you fussed over the four of them.
“Will do,” Brian promised.
“Go on and get that baby into bed,” Freddie said. “He’s nearly asleep already.”
“Which one?” you joked. You knew he was referring to Teddy, but looking at your husband, you knew he was nearly as ready for bed as his son.
“You’re teasing, but he really does look dead on his feet,” Freddie said. He smiled at John. “Let your lady take you home, Deaky.”
John chuckled. “If you insist. Goodnight, all.”
“Goodnight,” they chorused back. You let John lead you back to the dressing room, his hand settled protectively on the small of your back as Teddy leaned his head on your shoulder.
Read part three!
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thecheapsteaks · 6 years ago
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CARTOONS
As much as I watch anime, I unfortunately do not watch nearly as much western animation.  Part of this is just laziness and preferences, but also the way cartoons are released:  either they are all dropped at once on Netflix or some other service in a giant chunk of stuff to stream, or they are aired every few months without warning before entering hiatus until the network decides to slide more out.  I usually prefer to watch an episode or two each day or week depending, so this schedule can make this a bit difficult.  Anyway, I have tried to watch a couple shows, because there is good stuff coming out!  I can't just be a terrible weeb!  Two cartoons stood out to me this year.
Ducktales
I will disclose, I actually watched the premiere of this when it aired, but didn't follow up when the next episode came out because I'm pretty sure there was a break between when the series actually continued.  This is an enjoyable show!  It's nice to see the nephews made into more distinct characters, as well as Webby getting a personality beyond “we added a girl.”  Scrooge, Beakley, and Donald are cool too.  It does give me vibes of Gravity Falls in “makeshift family group learns lessons and has adventures” but that's fine, because it's nice to have characters who actually get along and love each other despite their differences, instead of shows where every character is miserable and barely tolerates each other (like every Fox animated sitcom)  Also, Flintheart Glomgold.
She-Ra
Another charming little show.  I like the characters a lot (Entrapta and Catra are my faves) and the designs are wonderful, so the haters can bug off.  The cast is nicely charming, and there really is some nice tension with how Adora and Catra have been put at odds and I would really like to see where it goes.  It just started, but I am looking forward for the next season and watching where it goes from here!  I don't have a ton to say about this really, but it's fun.  Watch it, it's a nice bit of Western Magical Girl and that makes it good.
FILMS
I don't watch a ton of movies!  Again, this is more due to my personal tastes, since I prefer to watch an hour or so of entertainment. Anything more and I lose interest because my attention dreadful. Also, I usually watch movies in theaters or outside with others barring most circumstances, and since I can't always get together with others to see movies I don't really go to a ton.  I did see in theaters a couple of recorded Love Live concert showings, and while those rule I guess they don't reeeeally count as movies?  Even if it is the closest I will get to seeing one love in the conceivable future.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure I saw too movies this year, and I didn't even see all of Deadpool 2. There was an emergency in the movie theater and we had to be evacuated RIGHT near the end, and I just haven't gotten around to seeing it.  I enjoyed the movie, but just haven't gotten around to it.  Anyway, it doesn't matter because the best movie I saw was...
Spider-Man:  Into the Spider-Verse
Okay, giving my movie of the year title to the only full movie I remember seeing this year may be a bit easy, but even if I had seen other movies this probably would have taken the gold.  It's just so damn good, and I'm not even a huge Spider-Man enthusiast.  It's cool to see the idea of alternate characters and universes, which comics have so many of, made into a cool movie that really goes into what it means to be a hero, or a Spider-Man.  Miles is a fun main character, and I like the way he is just thrust into superheroism, complete with thought bubbles and other comic details popping up around him.  His interaction with his father, which swings from embarrassment to love, is sweet, and he makes a great team with the other dimensional Peter Parker and Gwen.  The animation and style of the movie is just absurd, and really makes it stand out.  It's a real surprise that animation isn't used for action movies like this, since it works so well;  the choreography for the climactic final battle is just WILD. The only thing I could have hoped for would have been more of the B-Group.  They're all so good, though.  
MUSIC
I listen to a lot of metal, to the point where it becomes a bit tough to keep track of all of the different albums.  When an album stands out, though, it really stands out.  Here are five albums I really got into!
Nekrogoblikon – Welcome to Bonkers
This album is silly, and it really works out for it.  It really helps me enjoy an album when the songs are distinct and Welcome to Bonkers has some nice balance.  There are more traditional songs in Nekrogoblikon's wild vein of death metal such as Dressed as Goblins, but also the jaunty tropical song The Magic Spider and the ballad Goblins.  Having a nice mix of music and some great irreverence made this album my possible favorite of the year.
High on Fire – Electric Messiah
Sometimes it feels like there are a million stoner and/or doom metal bands growing out of the wood work, with names referencing Sasquatch, witches, mountains, and of course weed.  Sometimes this oversaturation can get a bit overwhelming, and they do begin to blend together at a point.  What I like most about High on Fire is that it is that it's just so damn fast and dirty.  It's got almost a thrash edge to it, with killer riffs and some great vocals in the vein of Lemmy Kilmister.  The title track is also an amazing tribute to Lemmy himself (much better than Metallica's Murder-One, if I say so myself).  High on Fire is super underrated and just so intense, it's great.
Alkaloid – Liquid Anatomy
I do like death metal.  Sometimes I just want to listen to something intense, growly, and overbearingly loud.  The downside is that this can blend together a bit at times.  This is why death metal that is just a bit more weird really stands out nicely to me.  It's spacey and bizarre.  The members of this band are immensely talented, but high talent and skill does guarantee a superb album.  In this case, they've made something unique and weird, which is what I dig in a death metal album.
Chapel of Disease - ...and as We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced the Eye
Speaking of weird death metal, this band managed to get onto my get on my radar with this album.  Their past few albums had been much more traditional death metal album, but when I listened to this it stood out the second I heard the first solo.  It was a huge dose of classic rock guitar-work in the middle of a heavy death metal song.  It's a combo that doesn't always pop up a lot, but when it does I really dig it.
U.D.O. - Steelfactory
U.D.O. is one of the earlier heavy metal bands I got into.  I first listened to Accept, the band for which frontman Udo Dirkschneider originally sang for, and listened to his band, which toured and recorded in parallel to Accept.   Accept had a comeback in the new millennium with a new singer, but Udo's band makes some solid heavy metal as well.  His voice is always unique, and he makes a nice variety of sounds. Accept, with a slightly changed line-up, released a nice album this year, but I feel Udo's band made a disc that was just a bit more unique, and while I both enjoy bands, I have to give U.D.O. a slight edge.  Accept recently lost its longtime bassist and songwriter, so it will be interesting to see if it mixes up their next album a bit more, as their last few albums have fallen into a slight rut.  Solid, yes, but needs a bit more to stand out.
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tainghekhongdaycomvn · 7 years ago
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Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge# of mentionsMy clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO59The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates45Time constraints44Link building35My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works29Content (strategy / creation / marketing)25Resource constraints23It's difficult to prove ROI18Budget constraints17It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques16I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees16It's difficult to prioritize my work16My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort15Effective reporting15Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems11It's difficult to compete with other companies11I'm required to wear multiple hats11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site# responsesSearch Engine Land184Search Engine Journal89Search Engine Roundtable74SEMrush51Ahrefs50Search Engine Watch41Quick Sprout / Neil Patel35HubSpot33Backlinko31Google Blogs29The SEM Post21Kissmetrics17Yoast16Distilled13SEO by the Sea13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request#responsesMore case studies26More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos)25More long-form step-by-step training/guides18Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos11Bring back UGC / YouMoz9More from Rand9Improve formatting of the emails9Higher-level, less-technical posts8More authors7More news (algorithm updates, e.g.)7Shorter posts, "quick wins"7Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities6Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.)6More about Moz tools5More data-driven, less opinion-based5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with, and we'll be developing materials in the near future to try and alleviate some of that particular frustration.
There's a real desire for more succinct, actionable, step-by-step walkthroughs on the Blog. We can pretty easily explore formats for posts that are off our "beaten path," and will attempt to make things easier to consume through improvements to both the content itself and its delivery. I think there's some room for more "short and sweet" mixed in with our longer norm.
The bulk of our audience does more than just SEO, despite a full 25% of them having it in their job titles, and the challenges you mentioned include a bunch of areas that are related to, but outside the traditional world of SEO. Since you all are clearly working on those sorts of things, we should work to highlight and facilitate the relationship between the SEO work and the non-SEO marketing work you do.
In looking through some of the other sites you all visit for information on SEO, and knowing the kinds of posts they typically publish, it's clear we've got an opportunity to publish more news. We've always dreamed of being more of a one-stop shop for SEO content, and that's good validation that we may want to head down that path.
Again, thank you all so much for the time and effort you spent filling out this survey. Hopefully you'll notice some changes in the near (and not-so-near) future that make it clear we're really listening.
If you've got anything to add to these results -- insights, further explanations, questions for clarification, rebuttals of points, etc. -- please leave them in the comments below. We're looking forward to continuing the conversation. =)
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fairchildlingpo1 · 7 years ago
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Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
http://ift.tt/2AAKHWq
0 notes
christinesumpmg · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
http://ift.tt/2AAKHWq
0 notes
conniecogeie · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
http://ift.tt/2AAKHWq
0 notes
kraussoutene · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
http://ift.tt/2AAKHWq
0 notes
christinesumpmg1 · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
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mercedessharonwo1 · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
http://ift.tt/2AAKHWq
0 notes
mariasolemarionqi · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
http://ift.tt/2AAKHWq
0 notes
rodneyevesuarywk · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
http://ift.tt/2AAKHWq
0 notes
dainiaolivahm · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
http://ift.tt/2AAKHWq
0 notes
byronheeutgm · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
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tainghekhongdaycomvn · 7 years ago
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Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge# of mentionsMy clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO59The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates45Time constraints44Link building35My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works29Content (strategy / creation / marketing)25Resource constraints23It's difficult to prove ROI18Budget constraints17It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques16I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees16It's difficult to prioritize my work16My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort15Effective reporting15Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems11It's difficult to compete with other companies11I'm required to wear multiple hats11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site# responsesSearch Engine Land184Search Engine Journal89Search Engine Roundtable74SEMrush51Ahrefs50Search Engine Watch41Quick Sprout / Neil Patel35HubSpot33Backlinko31Google Blogs29The SEM Post21Kissmetrics17Yoast16Distilled13SEO by the Sea13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request#responsesMore case studies26More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos)25More long-form step-by-step training/guides18Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos11Bring back UGC / YouMoz9More from Rand9Improve formatting of the emails9Higher-level, less-technical posts8More authors7More news (algorithm updates, e.g.)7Shorter posts, "quick wins"7Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities6Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.)6More about Moz tools5More data-driven, less opinion-based5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with, and we'll be developing materials in the near future to try and alleviate some of that particular frustration.
There's a real desire for more succinct, actionable, step-by-step walkthroughs on the Blog. We can pretty easily explore formats for posts that are off our "beaten path," and will attempt to make things easier to consume through improvements to both the content itself and its delivery. I think there's some room for more "short and sweet" mixed in with our longer norm.
The bulk of our audience does more than just SEO, despite a full 25% of them having it in their job titles, and the challenges you mentioned include a bunch of areas that are related to, but outside the traditional world of SEO. Since you all are clearly working on those sorts of things, we should work to highlight and facilitate the relationship between the SEO work and the non-SEO marketing work you do.
In looking through some of the other sites you all visit for information on SEO, and knowing the kinds of posts they typically publish, it's clear we've got an opportunity to publish more news. We've always dreamed of being more of a one-stop shop for SEO content, and that's good validation that we may want to head down that path.
Again, thank you all so much for the time and effort you spent filling out this survey. Hopefully you'll notice some changes in the near (and not-so-near) future that make it clear we're really listening.
If you've got anything to add to these results -- insights, further explanations, questions for clarification, rebuttals of points, etc. -- please leave them in the comments below. We're looking forward to continuing the conversation. =)
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maryhare96 · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with,..
http://ift.tt/2AAKHWq
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lawrenceseitz22 · 7 years ago
Text
Our Readership: Results of the 2017 Moz Blog Reader Survey
Posted by Trevor-Klein
This blog is for all of you. In a notoriously opaque and confusing industry that's prone to frequent changes, we see immense benefit in helping all of you stay on top of the game. To that end, every couple of years we ask for a report card of sorts, hoping not only to get a sense for how your jobs have changed, but also to get a sense for how we can improve.
About a month ago, we asked you all to take a reader survey, and nearly 600 of you generously gave your time. The results, summarized in this post, were immensely helpful, and were a reminder of how lucky we are to have such a thoughtful community of readers.
I've offered as much data as I can, and when possible, I've also trended responses against the same questions from our 2015 and 2013 surveys, so you can get a sense for how things have changed. There's a lot here, so buckle up. =)
Who our readers are
To put all of this great feedback into context, it helps to know a bit about who the people in our audience actually are. Sure, we can glean a bit of information from our site analytics, and can make some educated guesses, but neither of those can answer the questions we're most curious about. What's your day-to-day work like, and how much SEO does it really involve? Would you consider yourself more of an SEO beginner, or more of an SEO wizard? And, most importantly, what challenges are you facing in your work these days? The answers give us a fuller understanding of where the rest of your feedback comes from.
What is your job title?
Readers of the Moz Blog have a multitude of backgrounds, from CEOs of agencies to in-the-weeds SEOs of all skill levels. One of the most common themes we see, though, is a skew toward the more general marketing industry. I know that word clouds have their faults, but it's still a relatively interesting way to gauge how often things appear in a list like this, so here's what we've got this year:
Of note, similar to our results in 2015, the word "marketing" is the most common result, followed by the word "SEO" and the word "manager."
Here's a look at the top 20 terms used in this year's results, along with the percentage of responses containing each term. You'll also see those same percentages from the 2015 and 2013 surveys to give you an idea of what's changed -- the darker the bar, the more recent the survey:
The thing that surprises me the most about this list is how little it's changed in the four-plus years since we first asked the question (a theme you'll see recur in the rest of these results). In fact, the top 20 terms this year are nearly identical to the top 20 terms four years ago, with only a few things sliding up or down a few spots.
What percentage of your day-to-day work involves SEO?
We hear a lot about people wearing multiple hats for their companies. One person who took this survey noted that even at a 9,000-person company, they were the only one who worked on SEO, and it was only about 80% of their job. That idea is backed up by this data, which shows an incredibly broad range of responses. More than 10% of respondents barely touch SEO, and not even 14% say they're full-time:
One interesting thing to note is the sharp decline in the number of people who say that SEO isn't a part of their day-to-day at all. That shift is likely a result of our shift back toward SEO, away from related areas like social media and content marketing. I think we had attracted a significant number of community managers and content specialists who didn't work in SEO, and we're now seeing the pendulum swing the other direction.
On a scale of 1-5, how advanced would you say your SEO knowledge is?
The similarity between this year's graph for this question and those from 2015 and 2013 is simply astonishing:
There's been a slight drop in folks who say they're at an expert level, and a slight increase in folks who have some background, but are relative beginners. But only slight. The interesting thing is, our blog traffic has increased significantly over these four years, so the newer members of our audience bear a striking resemblance to those of you who've been around for quite some time. In a sense, that's reassuring -- it paints a clear picture for us as we continue refining our content.
Do you work in-house, or at an agency/consultancy?
Here's another window into just how little our audience has changed in the last couple of years:
A slight majority of our readers still work in-house for their own companies, and about a third still work on SEO for their company's clients.
Interestingly, though, respondents who work for clients deal with many of the same issues as those who work in-house -- especially in trying to convey the value of their work in SEO. They're just trying to send that message to external clients instead of internal stakeholders. More details on that come from our next question:
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your work today?
I'm consistently amazed by the time and thought that so many of you put into answering this question, and rest assured, your feedback will be presented to several teams around Moz, both on the marketing and the product sides. For this question, I organized each and every response into recurring themes, tallying each time those themes were mentioned. Here are all the themes that were mentioned 10 or more times:
Challenge # of mentions My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand the value of SEO 59 The industry and tactics are constantly changing; algo updates 45 Time constraints 44 Link building 35 My clients / colleagues / bosses don't understand how SEO works 29 Content (strategy / creation / marketing) 25 Resource constraints 23 It's difficult to prove ROI 18 Budget constraints 17 It's a difficult industry in which to learn tools and techniques 16 I regularly need to educate my colleagues / employees 16 It's difficult to prioritize my work 16 My clients either don't have or won't offer sufficient budget / effort 15 Effective reporting 15 Bureaucracy, red tape, other company problems 11 It's difficult to compete with other companies 11 I'm required to wear multiple hats 11
More than anything else, it's patently obvious that one of the greatest difficulties faced by any SEO is explaining it to other people in a way that demonstrates its value while setting appropriate expectations for results. Whether it's your clients, your boss, or your peers that you're trying to convince, it isn't an easy case to make, especially when it's so difficult to show what kind of return a company can see from an investment in SEO.
We also saw tons of frustrated responses about how the industry is constantly changing, and it takes too much of your already-constrained time just to stay on top of those changes.
In terms of tactics, link building easily tops the list of challenges. That makes sense, as it's the piece of SEO that relies most heavily on the cooperation of other human beings (and humans are often tricky beings to figure out). =)
Content marketing -- both the creation/copywriting side as well as the strategy side -- is still a challenge for many folks in the industry, though fewer people mentioned it this year as mentioned it in 2015, so I think we're all starting to get used to how those skills overlap with the more traditional aspects of SEO.
How our readers read
With all that context in mind, we started to dig into your preferences in terms of formats, frequency, and subject matter on the blog.
How often do you read posts on the Moz Blog?
This is the one set of responses that caused a bit of concern. We've seen a steady decrease in the number of people who say they read every day, a slight decrease in the number of people who say they read multiple times each week, and a dramatic increase in the number of people who say they read once a week.
The 2015 decrease came after an expansion in the scope of subjects we covered on the blog -- as we branched away from just SEO, we published more posts about social media, email, and other aspects of digital marketing. We knew that not all of those subjects were relevant for everyone, so we expected a dip in frequency of readership.
This year, though, we've attempted to refocus on SEO, and might have expected a bit of a rebound. That didn't happen:
There are two other factors at play, here. For one thing, we no longer publish a post every single weekday. After our publishing volume experiment in 2015, we realized it was safe (even beneficial) to emphasize quality over quantity, so if we don't feel like a post turned out the way we hoped, we don't publish it until we've had a chance to improve it. That means we're down to about four posts per week. We've also made a concerted effort to publish more posts about local SEO, as that's relevant to our software and an increasingly important part of the work of folks in our industry.
It could also be a question of time -- we've already covered how little time everyone in our industry has, and with that problem continuing, there may just be less time to read blog posts.
If anyone has any additional insight into why they read less often than they once did, please let us know in the comments below!
On which types of devices do you prefer to read blog posts?
We were surprised by the responses to this answer in 2013, and they've only gotten more extreme:
Nearly everyone prefers to read blog posts on a full computer. Only about 15% of folks add their phones into the equation, and the number of people in all the other buckets is extremely small. In 2013, our blog didn't have a responsive design, and was quite difficult to read on mobile devices. We thought that might have had something to do with people's responses -- maybe they were just used to reading our blog on larger screens. The trend in 2015 and this year, though, proves that's not the case. People just prefer reading posts on their computers, plain and simple.
Which other site(s), if any, do you regularly visit for information or education on SEO?
This was a new question for this year. We have our own favorite sites, of course, but we had no idea how the majority of folks would respond to this question. As it turns out, there was quite a broad range of responses listing sites that take very different approaches:
Site # responses Search Engine Land 184 Search Engine Journal 89 Search Engine Roundtable 74 SEMrush 51 Ahrefs 50 Search Engine Watch 41 Quick Sprout / Neil Patel 35 HubSpot 33 Backlinko 31 Google Blogs 29 The SEM Post 21 Kissmetrics 17 Yoast 16 Distilled 13 SEO by the Sea 13
I suppose it's no surprise that the most prolific sites sit at the top. They've always got something new, even if the stories don't often go into much depth. We've tended to steer our own posts toward longer-form, in-depth pieces, and I think it's safe to say (based on these responses and some to questions below) that it'd be beneficial for us to include some shorter stories, too. In other words, depth shouldn't necessarily be a requisite for a post to be published on the Moz Blog. We may start experimenting with a more "short and sweet" approach to some posts.
What our readers think of the blog
Here's where we get into more specific feedback about the Moz Blog, including whether it's relevant, how easy it is for you to consume, and more.
What percentage of the posts on the Moz Blog would you say are relevant to you and your work?
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results here, as SEO is a broad enough industry (and we've got a broad enough audience) that there's simply no way we're going to hit the sweet spot for everyone with every post. But those numbers toward the bottom of the chart are low enough that I feel confident we're doing pretty well in terms of topic relevance.
Do you feel the Moz Blog posts are generally too basic, too advanced, or about right?
Responses to this question have made me smile every time I see them. This is clearly one thing we're getting about as right as we could expect to. We're even seeing a slight balancing of the "too basic" and "too advanced" columns over time, which is great:
We also asked the people who told us that posts were "too basic" or "too advanced" to what extent they felt that way, using a scale from 1-5 (1 being "just a little bit too basic/advanced" and 5 being "way too basic/advanced." The responses tell us that the people who feel posts are too advanced feel more strongly about that opinion than the people who feel posts are too basic:
This makes some sense, I think. If you're just starting out in SEO, which many of our readers are, some of the posts on this blog are likely to go straight over your head. That could be frustrating. If you're an SEO expert, though, you probably aren't frustrated by posts you see as too basic for you -- you just skip past them and move on with your day.
This does make me think, though, that we might benefit from offering a dedicated section of the site for folks who are just starting out -- more than just the Beginner's Guide. That's actually something that was specifically requested by one respondent this year.
In general, what do you think about the length of Moz Blog posts?
While it definitely seems like we're doing pretty well in this regard, I'd also say we've got some room to tighten things up a bit, especially in light of the lack of time so many of you mentioned:
There were quite a few comments specifically asking for "short and sweet" posts from time to time -- offering up useful tips or news in a format that didn't expound on details because it didn't have to. I think sprinkling some of those types of posts in with the longer-form posts we have so often would be beneficial.
Do you ever comment on Moz Blog posts?
This was another new question this year. Despite so many sites are removing comment sections from their blogs, we've always believed in their value. Sometimes the discussions we see in comments end up being the most helpful part of the posts, and we value our community too much to keep that from happening. So, we were happy to see a full quarter of respondents have participated in comments:
We also asked for a bit of info about why you either do or don't comment on posts. The top reasons why you do were pretty predictable -- to ask a clarifying question related to the post, or to offer up your own perspective on the topic at hand. The #3 reason was interesting -- 18 people mentioned that they like to comment in order to thank the author for their hard work. This is a great sentiment, and as someone who's published several posts on this blog, I can say for a fact that it does feel pretty great. At the same time, those comments are really only written for one person -- the author -- and are a bit problematic from our perspective, because they add noise around the more substantial conversations, which are what we like to see most.
I think the solution is going to lie in a new UI element that allows readers to note their appreciation to the authors without leaving one of the oft-maligned "Great post!" comments. There's got to be a happy medium there, and I think it's worth our finding it.
The reasons people gave for not commenting were even more interesting. A bunch of people mentioned the need to log in (sorry, folks -- if we didn't require that, we'd spend half our day removing spam!). The most common response, though, involved a lack of confidence. Whether it was worded along the lines of "I'm an introvert" or along the lines of "I just don't have a lot of expertise," there were quite a few people who worried about how their comments would be received.
I want to take this chance to encourage those of you who feel that way to take the step, and ask questions about points you find confusing. At the very least, I can guarantee you aren't the only ones, and others like you will appreciate your initiative. One of the best ways to develop your expertise is to get comfortable asking questions. We all work in a really confusing industry, and the Moz Blog is all about providing a place to help each other out.
What, if anything, would you like to see different about the Moz Blog?
As usual, the responses to this question were chock full of great suggestions, and again, we so appreciate the amount of time you all spent providing really thoughtful feedback.
One pattern I saw was requests for more empirical data -- hard evidence that things should be done a certain way, whether through case studies or other formats. Another pattern was requests for step-by-step walkthroughs. That makes a lot of sense for an industry of folks who are strapped for time: Make things as clear-cut as possible, and where we can, offer a linear path you can walk down instead of asking you to holistically understand the subject matter, then figure that out on your own. (That's actually something we're hoping to do with our entire Learning Center: Make it easier to figure out where to start, and where to continue after that, instead of putting everything into buckets and asking you all to figure it out.)
Whiteboard Friday remains a perennial favorite, and we were surprised to see more requests for more posts about our own tools than we had requests for fewer posts about our own tools. (We've been wary of that in the past, as we wanted to make sure we never crossed from "helpful" into "salesy," something we'll still focus on even if we do add another tool-based post here and there.)
We expected a bit of feedback about the format of the emails -- we're absolutely working on that! -- but didn't expect to see so many folks requesting that we bring back YouMoz. That's something that's been on the backs of our minds, and while it may not take the same form it did before, we do plan on finding new ways to encourage the community to contribute content, and hope to have something up and running early in 2018.
Request #responses More case studies 26 More Whiteboard Friday (or other videos) 25 More long-form step-by-step training/guides 18 Clearer steps to follow in posts; how-tos 11 Bring back UGC / YouMoz 9 More from Rand 9 Improve formatting of the emails 9 Higher-level, less-technical posts 8 More authors 7 More news (algorithm updates, e.g.) 7 Shorter posts, "quick wins" 7 Quizzes, polls, or other engagement opportunities 6 Broader range of topics (engagement, CRO, etc.) 6 More about Moz tools 5 More data-driven, less opinion-based 5
What our readers want to see
This section is a bit more future-facing, where some of what we asked before had to do with how things have been in the past.
Which of the following topics would you like to learn more about?
There were very, very few surprises in this list. Lots of interest in on-page SEO and link building, as well as other core tactical areas of SEO. Content, branding, and social media all took dips -- that makes sense, given the fact that we don't usually post about those things anymore, and we've no doubt lost some audience members who were more interested in them as a result. Interestingly, mobile took a sizable dip, too. I'd be really curious to know what people think about why that is. My best guess is that with the mobile-first indexing from Google and with responsive designs having become so commonplace, there isn't as much of a need as there once was to think of mobile much differently than there was a couple of years ago. Also of note: When we did this survey in 2015, Google had recently rolled out its "Mobile-Friendly Update," not-so-affectionately referred to by many in the industry as Mobilegeddon. So... it was on our minds. =)
Which of the following types of posts would you most like to see on the Moz Blog?
This is a great echo and validation of what we took away from the more general question about what you'd like to see different about the Blog: More tactical posts and step-by-step walkthroughs. Posts that cut to the chase and offer a clear direction forward, as opposed to some of the types at the bottom of this list, which offer more opinions and cerebral explorations:
What happens next?
Now we go to work. =)
We'll spend some time fully digesting this info, and coming up with new goals for 2018 aimed at making improvements inspired by your feedback. We'll keep you all apprised as we start moving forward.
If you have any additional insight that strikes you in taking a look at these results, please do share it in the comments below -- we'd love to have those discussions.
For now, we've got some initial takeaways that we're already planning to take action on.
Primary takeaways
There are some relatively obvious things we can take away from these results that we're already working on:
People in all businesses are finding it quite difficult to communicate the value of SEO to their clients, bosses, and colleagues. That's something we can help with, and we'll be developing materials in the near future to try and alleviate some of that particular frustration.
There's a real desire for more succinct, actionable, step-by-step walkthroughs on the Blog. We can pretty easily explore formats for posts that are off our "beaten path," and will attempt to make things easier to consume through improvements to both the content itself and its delivery. I think there's some room for more "short and sweet" mixed in with our longer norm.
The bulk of our audience does more than just SEO, despite a full 25% of them having it in their job titles, and the challenges you mentioned include a bunch of areas that are related to, but outside the traditional world of SEO. Since you all are clearly working on those sorts of things, we should work to highlight and facilitate the relationship between the SEO work and the non-SEO marketing work you do.
In looking through some of the other sites you all visit for information on SEO, and knowing the kinds of posts they typically publish, it's clear we've got an opportunity to publish more news. We've always dreamed of being more of a one-stop shop for SEO content, and that's good validation that we may want to head down that path.
Again, thank you all so much for the time and effort you spent filling out this survey. Hopefully you'll notice some changes in the near (and not-so-near) future that make it clear we're really listening.
If you've got anything to add to these results -- insights, further explanations, questions for clarification, rebuttals of points, etc. -- please leave them in the comments below. We're looking forward to continuing the conversation. =)
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