The Nexus Content Review Process
Before publishing new onsite content or submitting offsite content for publication, many Nexus clients prefer to provide a quick review. Your copywriter will then incorporate your edits, follow up on any questions as needed, and move the content forward to start generating SEO power for your website.
What does the content review process look like? What kinds of edits are the most helpful for our team to refine our understanding of your company’s voice? We’ve rounded up everything you need to know about content review:
What to Expect From Us
We primarily use Google Docs to create and share new content rather than Microsoft Word. Since Docs are saved in the cloud, they’re much easier for us to share and update. They also allow us to clearly see the edit history of a document.
If Google Docs are new for your team, please don’t hesitate to ask your account manager or copywriter any questions — we’ll be happy to help!
When new content is ready for your review, your Nexus copywriter will provide you with a link to a Google Doc that contains the content. If we’re sharing a draft of an onsite article or activity, we will also share a link to a preview of an unpublished draft on your website in most cases.
- When reviewing offsite content, you’ll only need to read the Google Doc and provide any edits or comments directly on the document.
- When reviewing onsite content, you can review the unpublished blog preview to see how the finished piece will appear once it’s live on your website, but the Google Doc version of the article will be the easiest place to leave specific line edits.
We’ll also provide you with a timeframe or “Review By” date for each new piece of content that requires your review. This helps ensure that we can keep a steady pace of content production and meet any deadlines set by our external publishing partners.
Extremely delayed content review can ultimately harm the productivity and ROI of your Nexus engagement. In some cases of extreme delays, we may give you the heads-up that we’ll move forward with the content in question by a specific date.
That said, we also understand that you’re busy with a variety of responsibilities. If you ever expect that you’ll be unable to review content by the requested date or have any questions, just let us know — we can make adjustments as necessary.
The Content Review Hub
For most engagements, we’ll share content for your review in your “Content Review Hub,” which is housed in your engagement’s “Master Account Spreadsheet.” We recommend creating a bookmark for this spreadsheet, but please reach out to your account manager or copywriter if you’re ever unable to find it.
The Content Review Hub looks like this:
How the Content Review Hub Works
- Your copywriter will add new content to the review hub once it’s ready for your review by updating the date fields, activity type, title, link(s), and optional notes/context. We’ll set the status to “Ready for Review.”
- You can then check the Review Hub at any time to see new content.
- Your copywriter will also send a weekly email to update you on changes made to the hub in the past week. If there are no new pieces ready for your review, we’ll let you know what to expect from us next and when.
- Once you’ve reviewed a piece of content, you’ll update the status column to either “Reviewed and Approved” or “Reviewed – Discuss Further” (if you want to discuss the content or would like to see a second draft).
- You’ll then reply to your copywriter’s weekly update email to let them know that you’ve finished reviewing one or multiple pieces of content.
How “Review By” Timeframes Work
We’ll ask that new content added to your Review Hub be reviewed by the Friday of the following week. For instance, if a new offsite post is ready for review on a Wednesday, we’ll ask that you finish reviewing it by Friday of the following week.
This timeframe ensures that you’ll always have a feasible turnaround period to review content both before and after receiving our weekly update/reminder email. This will also give you the flexibility to better incorporate content review into your normal schedule, and it ensures that we’re not sharing content in a difficult-to-manage manner.
We encourage you to visit the Review Hub at any point during the week when you’re able to set aside time for reviewing content (not just after receiving our weekly reminder email).
Please let us know if you ever expect that you’ll be unable to meet a deadline so that we can make adjustments.
Alternative Review Processes
In some cases, we’ll opt to use a content review process different from the one outlined above:
- External project management platforms
- If your business uses a platform like Trello or Asana to manage marketing tasks, we can use it, too. No need to reinvent the wheel if your team already has a process that works! We’ll just need login credentials and appropriate permissions to post and update tasks.
- Email-based review of individual articles
- For non-standard Nexus engagements, it may make sense to manage the content review process solely via email. In this case, your copywriter will email you with new pieces for review along with a “review by” date and any notes. Questions and follow-up will occur on that thread as needed.
Your Nexus account manager will work with you during the onboarding process to determine the content review process that will work best for your engagement. For existing Nexus clients, we can also make adjustments over time if you strongly prefer one process over another — just let us know so that your account manager can discuss it with you soon.
What’s Most Helpful for Us
Feedback on content is most helpful for Nexus copywriters when it’s specific, actionable, and gives us a clearer idea of your preferences that we can carry forward into new content. For instance, rather than highlighting a sentence and asking that it be rewritten, leave a brief comment explaining why it’s not hitting the mark or effectively representing your voice.
For more straightforward diction or stylistic changes, direct line edits in the Google Doc will be most helpful.
We also ask that clients avoid heavily reworking links in content, especially in offsite articles (since the primary goal of these activities is to build authority to specific pages on your website using particular types of anchor text). In onsite content, we have greater flexibility with linking. However, if you strongly prefer that something about a link be changed, please let us know so that we can adjust our strategy as needed.
In onsite content, we use heading tags, image alt text, links, and keyword mentions to signal its relevance to Google. In general, please avoid heavily reworking these technical elements and mentions of relevant keywords. This will ensure the content can perform according to the keyword optimization strategy developed by your copywriter for that article.
If you have bigger-picture feedback on a piece of content or have trouble describing your desired changes, please let us know so that we can discuss and offer potential solutions.
What’s Most Helpful for You?
Our goal is for the content review process to be a collaborative one that helps us effectively capture your brand voice while delivering SEO results. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your account manager and/or copywriter if you:
- Have questions about the content review process or would like to request a process adjustment
- Have big-picture feedback to discuss that will help your copywriter better represent your brand
- Want to share new business priorities, preferences, or resources so that they can be incorporated into your content
- Have any questions about your overall SEO strategy, our content creation process, or anything else
We’ll be happy to answer your questions and chat about your strategy — just let us know!
Website Relaunch: A Guide for Nexus Clients
You’ve decided to do a site-wide overhaul, but aren’t sure how it will impact SEO. Never fear! We’ve put together a guide to walk you through the critical steps of relaunching your website. If you have specific questions about any of the steps in this list, your Account Manager will be happy to help.
- What types of changes have an SEO impact?
- What needs to be done before the new website goes live?
- What needs to be done immediately following the website relaunch?
What types of changes have an SEO impact?
Any change to the website has the potential to impact SEO — however, the biggest changes that can impact SEO performance are changes to the parts of the site Google can “read.” We’ll explain a few of the key ones here and how they impact SEO:
URL changes
This is the single biggest thing that can impact your SEO. Your page’s URL is like the page’s name or identity in Google’s mind. If you change the URL without properly redirecting, it would be like handing someone a copy of The Great Gatsby that you had retitled The Roaring 20s Were Wild without letting them know. When their other friends recommend The Great Gatsby (or, in SEO terms, when other sites link to the old URL without a redirect in place), your book recipient wouldn’t know it was the same book you gave them. We want to avoid that!
Changes to H2s,H3s, or image alt text
This can have a negative impact on your best-performing pages, as these are what Google “reads” to understand what the page is about. To continue the book analogy, this would be like trying to understand a textbook without chapters, section headers, or captions. We want to preserve these page elements on the new site so that Google can continue to smoothly understand the site’s content.
Site speed and mobile-friendliness
Google increasingly prioritizes sites that load quickly and are usable for searchers on mobile. Any site relaunch should take the technical performance of the site into account.
Changes that are less important for SEO
Some website elements can provide a better or worse customer experience but have very little impact on SEO. These types of changes include:
- Using a new blog template (assuming URLs and text formatting is preserved)
- Adding a chatbot
- Adding additional calls to action
What needs to be done before the new website goes live?
Set up your robots.txt correctly
After arriving at a website but before spidering it, the search crawler will look for a robots.txt file. If it finds one, the crawler will read that file first before continuing through the page. Because the robots.txt file contains information about how the search engine should crawl, the information found there will instruct further crawler action on this particular site. If the robots.txt file does not contain any directives that disallow a search crawler’s activity (or if the site doesn’t have a robots.txt file), it will proceed to crawl other information on the site.
Read more
- Semrush has a helpful guide on robots.txt: https://www.semrush.com/blog/beginners-guide-robots-txt/
Ensure you have a sitemap
You can use an XML sitemap to make sure Google can find and crawl all pages you deem essential on your website. An XML sitemap contains all the important pages of a site to help Google determine its structure.
Read more
- Here is a resource directly from Google on building a sitemap: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/sitemaps/build-sitemap
- Here’s a HubSpot article on editing/viewing your sitemap: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/domains-and-urls/view-and-edit-your-hubspot-hosted-domain-sitemap
- Yoast SEO is our recommended WordPress plugin for creating a sitemap: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/
Create a redirect plan
Determine the new location for all existing pages on the website so you can put redirects into place after pushing the new website live. Redirects will prevent any loss of existing online authority during the relaunch process.
Read more
- We recommend this plugin for managing WordPress redirects: https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
- HubSpot has a native redirection tool that can be used during the website relaunch process and beyond.
Transition tracking and plugins
Bring over any tracking codes or plugins to the new website such as:
- HubSpot forms or integrations
- Google Tag Manager
- Google Analytics (Universal Analytics and/or GA4)
- Etc.
What needs to be done immediately following the website relaunch?
Check all 301 redirects
Double-check that all 301 redirects are functioning correctly to prevent any loss of online authority or 404 errors. This is the most important step to preserving SEO performance, so don’t skip it!
Ensure noindex and nofollow tags are removed
View your website’s source code to ensure noindex or nofollow meta tags are removed to prevent indexing or crawling issues. This ensures pages can seamlessly show up in search results pages, and that SEO “link juice” is passed correctly through links around the site.
Reindex pages via Search Console
Submit core product and content pages for indexing via Google Search Console to speed up the re-indexing process.
Double-check how Google views your pages
Google provides free tools which measure the speed of a webpage and how it will be rendered by Google’s search crawler. Run your website pages through these tools to identify any page speed issues after your website goes live.
Read more
- We recommend Google Lighthouse. Learn more about this tool here.
- Google Search Console can also give you more information about how Google views your page performance, mobile-friendliness, and indexability.
Monitor for issues
Check the website regularly for the first 2 weeks after it goes live to identify any issues that arise during the relaunch process such as:
- Tracking issues in Google Analytics or external tools
- Crawl errors in Moz or Google Search Console
- Indexing issues in Google Search Console
- Potential manual actions in Google Search Console
Google Analytics 4: Information and Next Steps for Nexus Clients
What’s Happening
Google has announced that Google Analytics 4 is completely replacing Universal Analytics. Universal Analytics properties (Google Analytics 3) will stop collecting data on July 1, 2023.
If your account manager sent you this resource, this means you’re likely on Universal Analytics (GA3), but if you need to confirm, this Google resource can help you determine which one you’re operating on.
Google Analytics 4 is a big change for how/which metrics are being tracked, the way data is collected, and the interface of the tool. While any big switch like this will involve hiccups, this move is an exciting evolution for the world of web analytics. It enables code-free event tracking, helps fill gaps caused by privacy compliance, and more.
For more information about the differences between Google Analytics 4 and the current Universal Analytics, here are a few helpful resources:
- Search Engine Journal: Google Analytics 4 FAQs
- Google: Prepare for the Future with Google Analytics 4
- Skillshop: Training on Google Analytics 4
Nexus is here to support the success of your SEO strategy over time, which relies on trustworthy data. So, while we can’t make this migration on your behalf, we’ve put together some resources on what this change means and what next steps are needed.
What Does This Change Mean For My Website Today?
When
While end of life for Google Analytics 3 / Universal Analytics is still far away, starting to track data in a Google Analytics 4 property as soon as possible will be imperative to minimizing gaps in year over year data.
Because Universal Analytics will stop collecting new data on July 1, 2023, you should set up Google Analytics 4 by July 1, 2022 in order to have the fullest data possible.
Who
You may be able to complete these next steps yourself if you have experience setting up GA or working in the back end of your website.
However, you may need support from your web development resource in order to complete the changes outlined in the next section. To make this request simple, we’ve created an email template you can access below that covers what is needed.
What
1) Start Tracking in a Google Analytics 4 Property
You’ll need to use the Google Analytics 4 Setup Assistant to create a new GA4 property that collects data in parallel with your existing Universal Analytics property. There are no changes to your Universal Analytics property, and it will continue to collect data until July 2023.
The setup wizard should make the basic setup a very quick/low-effort task.
Resources
2) Configure Conversions in Google Analytics 4
In Universal Analytics, “goal completions” are how the Nexus team (and likely yourself and other members of your team!) understand the value of marketing efforts that pass through your website. Today, goals on your site may include things like contact us form submissions, demo requests, or webinar signups, and they may be configured either as destination or event goals.
In Google Analytics 4, these are more simply called “conversions,” and they’re measured with an event-based data model, which typically enables a more straightforward, code-free setup process compared to UA.
Option 1 (Simplest)
Use the UA → GA4 Goals Migration Tool to quickly recreate goals from your connected Universal Analytics property as conversions in Google Analytics.
Destination and Event Goals (the most common for Nexus engagements) are eligible for migration using this tool.
Option 2 (Backup)
In some cases, or if you have trouble with the tool, you may need to recreate corresponding versions of your goals manually as conversions in Google Analytics 4. If needed, you can use the following resources.
- Step 1: Take Stock of Current Goal Tracking (Goal Completions in Google Analytics)
- If helpful, fill out this Google Analytics 4: Conversion Setup Worksheet. If you’re not able to fill this out yourself, your Nexus account manager can provide support.
- A couple of notes on auditing your current setup…
- You’ll want to ensure any goals being used by Nexus, your marketing team, your website team, or anyone else at your business are brought over to Google Analytics.
- However, as noted by Google, “Google Analytics 4 adoption provides a great opportunity to confirm which KPIs are important to your stakeholders.” You won’t want to move over goals that are out of date such as “Holiday Purchase 2017”.
- When in doubt, go ahead and reconfigure a corresponding goal in Google Analytics 4. You can always turn off data collection later, but you won’t have data retroactively.
- Step 2: Configure Conversions in GA4
- For each individual conversion, you’ll create/switch on the appropriate conversion event in Google Analytics 4.
In some cases, you may need to set up a custom event.
- For each individual conversion, you’ll create/switch on the appropriate conversion event in Google Analytics 4.
Additional Resources
- Google Analytics: UA -> GA4 Conversions in Google Analytics 4
- Google Analytics: UA → GA Goals migration tool
3) Grant Access to Nexus
Finally, please grant edit-level access to analytics@nexusmarketing.com and notify your account manager when this has been completed.
What Will This Change Mean Later?
Between now and July 2023, your account manager will transition reporting on traffic and conversions for your account to Google Analytics 4. But for now, reporting will remain consistent and we’ll continue to rely on information from Universal Analytics.
How Nexus Can Help
Where Can Nexus Support Your Team?
- Providing high-level guidance to your web developer about what is needed for the switch to Google Analytics 4
- Advising on current goal setup and how that translates into conversions in Google Analytics 4
- Troubleshooting on code-free conversion setup in Google Analytics 4
- Development of traffic and conversion reports in Google Analytics 4 to support our SEO engagement
Where Will Nexus Need Additional Support?
- Setup of the Google Analytics 4 instance
- Troubleshooting with data collection in Google Analytics 4
- Setup of any custom event conversions in Google Analytics 4 that require working with code
Additional Resources
Template to Send to Web Resource
[Contact Name],
As you may know, Google is replacing Universal Analytics with the new Google Analytics 4 tool.
The full replacement won’t happen until next summer, but in order to minimize any gaps in data collection, we’d like to complete the setup one year before Universal Analytics is discontinued. But we need your help in order to make sure transition can occur as seamlessly as possible.
Could you please complete the following by July 1st, 2022?
- Set up a new Google Analytics 4 property. Use the setup assistant to create a new GA4 property that collects data alongside our existing property.
- Set up conversions in Google Analytics 4. Use the goal migration tool to import our existing goals as conversions in GA4. You may have to troubleshoot on this one to make sure all goals are migrated correctly.
- Provide access to the Nexus team. Please grant edit level access to analytics@nexusmarketing.com.
The team at Nexus Marketing (who we work with for SEO) put together this resource with a few more details and considerations for this, which may be helpful. Let me know if you have any questions about what is needed.
Best,
[Your name]
Cross-Marketing Solicitation Advising for Partners
Cross-Marketing Solicitation Advising for Partners
One thing we’ve heard from our partners is that they often get solicitations for collaborations from other businesses and don’t have time to sort through them.
We’d like to help you sort through these requests and prioritize the important ones.
When you get these inbound requests, send them directly to us and we’ll deal with them.
We’ll elevate the ones who are worth connecting with and help save you time!
Wondering how you opt-in to cross-marketing solicitation advising?
Simply start forwarding solicitations to your CPC with the following message in the body of your email: cross-marketing solicitation advising requested
Within 3 business days your CPC team member will reach back out to you with their insight and recommendation.
Have questions? Reach out to your CPC and they will be happy clarify!