Melissa Megginson Axtell, MBA

PBNs can boost rankings. But for how long? Only until Google catches you. And Google’s SpamBrain flags 40 billion spam pages. Every. Single. Day. Think your PBN is invisible? It’s not. Here’s the problem: PBNs aren’t authority. They’re an illusion of it. They violate Google’s spam policies. They strip away trust. They invite penalties. And when a penalty hits? Your traffic doesn’t dip. It disappears. Because SEO isn’t about link quantity. It’s about link quality. Real authority comes from: → Content people want to share → Links you earn, not buy → A reputation you protect, not gamble Shortcuts feel fast. But rebuilding from zero takes years. So before you buy that next PBN link, ask yourself: “Would I still want this link if Google didn’t count it?” If the answer is no… That’s your warning. ♻️ Share this with someone who’s one shady backlink away from disaster. #SEO #techSEO #SEOservices #SEOconsultant #B2BSEO #LocalBusibessGrowth #LocalBusinessMarketking

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Hey, Product Marketing friends: Stop treating positioning as the deliverable. It’s the 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒, not the finish line. The rest of Marketing doesn’t care. They want campaigns, website copy, event messaging. Sales doesn’t care. They need first-call decks, objection handling, constant reinforcement. Product doesn’t care. They want insights that shape roadmap. CS doesn’t care. They want renewal talk tracks and advocacy hooks. A doc on its own changes nothing. Positioning only works when it lives: ➔ Activated across every internal + external channel ➔ Evangelized by you, your CMO, your CEO ➔ Proved through impact metrics (stage conversions, CTRs, win rates, ASP lift) At Gong, when reps actually used the new narrative, win rates jumped +46%. At Clari, activating positioning tied to the “Run Revenue” story helped us hit 140%+ of pipeline target. The impact of positioning isn’t measured in pages created. It’s measured in pipeline created. Because the market doesn’t read your positioning doc. Your teams don’t either.

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Me: "We're going to cut these SEO keywords that have driven thousands of visitors to our website each month" This sentence that would stop most SEO agencies + company execs in their tracks...and probably question my sanity as well Lucky for me, our leadership team + our SEO agency YOYABA didn't bat an eye when I explained why I didn't want us focusing on those keywords any longer When we began our focused work into SEO, we saw that we had keywords driving thousands of monthly visits to our website. THOUSANDS. From just a few keywords. These are the kinds of keywords that make SEO reports look great. But here's the thing - they weren't driving pipeline. At all. Most teams would've doubled down here because the "metrics" said they were "working" Instead, we killed them and focused on lower-volume, longer-tail searches that *actually* aligned with how our market searches the web If I were to go back in time + do this again, here's the TL;DR I'd give to my younger self When you dive into the SEO world, begin here: 🙋‍♂️ Start with your buyers, not with keywords The highest-volume searches aren’t necessarily the most valuable for your business 💰 Measure handraiser + pipeline impact, not just traffic This requires more sophisticated tracking (or less as it’s connecting dots that technology doesn’t connect well), but it’s the only way to know if your SEO strategy + execution is actually working 🤓 Don’t skip the technical foundation The unsexy technical work often has more immediate impact than the content work everyone wants to focus on. It’s much easier to know what to do technically + build that into your workflow than to go back + edit every piece of content retroactively. 👯‍♂️ Find an agency that thinks like a business partner, not just an SEO vendor YOYABA told me “no” when I wanted to move faster in ways that wouldn’t work. They pushed back on our assumptions about what success looked like. That’s what you want in a partner. - - - - - - - - - - This reflection stemmed from the recent customer story that YOYABA wrote about us + our work together over the course of this year. More on what we did together can be found in the story on their website :) PS: If you want to elevate your SEO/AEO, AI search & organic growth into a revenue-driving function in 2026, you should talk with YOYABA. You’ll speak with real experts, not with sales. Book your call here: https://lnkd.in/eMEHhQ2S

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Behind every great marketing team is a great agency partner (or several). As the CMO of Zappi, I hire agencies with the same care I hire an FTE for my team. Here's the reality most CMOs face: Your headcount is always going to be lean. Your budget is finite. Your internal team can't be experts at everything. And you need to move fast. This is where agencies become critical. They give you: ▶ Flexibility you can't get with full-time hires ▶ Scale up for a launch, scale down after ▶ No long hiring cycles when you need to move quickly ▶ Specialized expertise your team doesn't have ▶ Deep knowledge in specific channels ▶ Cross-industry perspective from working with multiple clients ▶ Access to tools and tech you don't need to own ▶ Speed that changes everything ▶ Faster implementation than building in-house ▶ Teams ready to execute immediately ▶ No learning curve on new platforms or tactics The best agency relationships aren't transactional. They're partnerships. The agencies that understand your business. Know your customers. Challenge your thinking. Bring ideas, not just execution. At Zappi, our agency partners are essential. They enable us to punch above our weight. To compete with companies 10x our size. To launch campaigns that would take months to build internally. The mistake CMOs make? Treating agencies like order-takers instead of strategic partners. (By the way... same mistake when insights teams are treated this way, too!) The best CMOs I know: → Share business context deeply → Include agencies in planning early → Give them room to bring ideas → Build long-term relationships, not project-based transactions Your marketing results depend on your team AND your partners. Choose agencies that align with your values. That feel like an extension of your own team. Who embrace similar ways of thinking. And that stand to help you learn and make you even better. Shout out to Avery Akkineni and our partners at VaynerX VaynerMedia (pictured with the wonderful and hilarious Rob Mayhew). 💚 Follow me (Nataly Kelly) for more CMO advice. #CMO #marketing #agencies

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In 2026, ABO is no longer the best way to test creatives. I didn’t want to believe it either. But after testing CBO since September across five different accounts, the data was very clear. CBO was ~27% more efficient on average. Here’s the CBO testing structure I’m running now: - Exclude all existing customers (Klaviyo + Pixel) - 100% Broad targeting - Set a minimum spend per ad set to force learning - Use Flexible Ads when I’m testing very similar creative variations What happens next is key 👇 Winners move into CBO Scaling Top performers also get pushed into Whitelisting & Partnership campaigns That said… I still see ABO outperform CBO in some accounts, especially smaller ones. So make sure to test both and see what works best for your account.

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"But Kyle, the spreadsheet said our conversion 'has to go up.' Shouldn't this be something owned by Product Marketing?" I’ve seen this play out more times than I can count. And I've been responsible for guiding people in the wrong direction more than once. Here's what usually happens: Leadership builds a model, the model spits out a number, and suddenly, “Stage 1 to Stage 2 needs to improve by X%.” So we hand that number to a team (PMM) and tell them to go make it happen. Completely the wrong way to go about it. The first mistake is assigning a number to someone who can’t actually control it. Product marketing gets this all the time. Close rate. Late-stage conversion. Revenue that depends on pricing, sales execution, product gaps, competitive pressure, and a dozen other variables. PMM can influence outcomes. They don’t own the entire system. When we pretend they do, they end up getting blamed for things they didn’t cause and doing random work to prove they’re “helping.” Which leads to the second issue. Everyone runs in different directions. One person rewrites messaging. Another rebuilds the deck. Someone else launches a campaign. It all feels productive, but none of it is coordinated. EOQ shows up, and someone asks what actually worked, and the honest answer is usually “we’re not sure.” Then comes the third problem. Product marketing gets pulled apart. Sales wants enablement. Product wants launches. CS wants customer stories. Everyone has a reasonable ask. So PMM gradually becomes the highest-paid request taker in the company. So how do you fix it? Here's what has worked for me in the past. Especially after The fix isn’t complicated, but it does require you to ACTUALLY DO IT. Pick a North Star. One metric everyone agrees matters most right now. Then be explicit about what you’re trying to change, why you believe it’s the right lever, and what specific projects you’re going to run to move it. Conversion rate might be it, and that's okay! One more thing that matters more than people realize: don’t report the metric every week. If you have a long sales cycle, weekly conversion updates are a waste of time. Report the work weekly. What shipped, what you learned, what you’re changing next. Look at the metric quarterly. Models are useful. They tell you where you want to go. They don’t tell you how to get there. That part is still on us. Ya know, the humans. ;)

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Stop Guessing, Start Ranking! 🚀 Tired of missing out on local customers in Texas? Your buyers are searching for you right now. Here’s how to turn those searches into real, high-quality leads using Local SEO. 👇 The 60-Second Local SEO Game Plan: ✅ Claim & Optimize Your Google Business Profile Accurate NAP (Name, Address, Phone) Right categories + high-quality photos Regular posts & Q&A ✅ Target Local Keywords “Service + City” (e.g., “Plumber Dallas TX”) Capture commercial & transactional intent ✅ Optimize Your Website City-specific landing pages Local schema markup Mobile-friendly & fast ✅ Build Local Trust Get & respond to reviews Secure local backlinks & partnerships ✅ Track What Matters Map & search impressions Calls, directions, form fills Lead quality & conversion rates Local SEO isn’t just about visibility—it’s about being found by people ready to buy. Found this helpful? ✅ Save this post for later! 🔔 Follow me for more actionable SEO tips. 💬 DM me for a deeper dive into local lead generation. #LocalSEO #LeadGeneration #GoogleBusinessProfile #SmallBusinessMarketing #SEO #DigitalMarketing #TexasBusiness

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There is often one section in a content strategy plan that is overlooked: The Not section. This is where you define what you're not going to do: 🙅‍♂️ The audience that you're not targeting 🙅 The audience pain points that you're not discussing because there is no alignment with your product messaging 🙅‍♀️ The content formats that you're not producing ⛔ The KPIs that you're not measuring 🚫 The channels that you're not going to be on You can try to be all the things to everyone, but you'll end up with a content strategy that is scattered, unfocused, and too big. Have you developed a Not section?

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Ever looked at your martech stack and thought “oh sh*t… this is worse than I realized,” you’re not alone. That’s exactly where Hope Barrett found herself when she joined SoundCloud. She came in to replace Nielsen’s attribution tool. But instead of a clean handoff, she found a decade of duct tape. Campaign logic lived outside the platform. Frequency caps ran through scripts. The numbers looked fine until you asked where they came from. So she didn’t just migrate. She rebuilt by running a proper RFP process She didn’t want flashy slides. She wanted a partner who wouldn’t require workarounds. She put it best: “You want the new features, but you’re not in the queue. Out-of-the-box users always get the roadmap first.” She chose MoEngage, because it supported real-world use cases without custom middleware. No tribal knowledge. No buried logic. Just a foundation the team could build on with confidence. And in twelve weeks, with a team of three, she led a complete messaging stack reset. They cut 200 legacy campaigns down to what mattered. Messaging shifted under the product org. Notifications were reimagined as real product features, not just batch blasts. Now, governance is clean. Data runs through BigQuery. Audiences sync everywhere. And more importantly, the system finally makes sense. 🎧 Hope breaks it all down: the audit, the rebuild, the migration, and what it really takes to future-proof your messaging stack: https://lnkd.in/gBNhAHi3 Humans of Martech Phil Gamache Darrell Alfonso

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🔮 Heads-up for any business using SMS marketing (that doesn't want a $5,000 fine): Starting September 1, 2025, Texas expanded its Business & Commerce Code, and it now covers marketing text messages. That means if you’re: - Sending marketing texts to anyone in Texas - Or based in Texas and running SMS campaigns… You may need to register with the Texas Secretary of State (yes, even if your business isn’t located there). Here’s what’s on the table: - $200 annual registration fee - A $10,000 security deposit (most brands go the surety bond route, so you’re not coughing up the full 10k) - Registration isn’t official until Texas issues your certificate What you're risking: - Up to $5,000 per violation (EACH unregistered text could count) - Texans can sue you under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (with damages up to 3× the economic loss) - Knowing violations = Class A misdemeanor (criminal exposure) Exemptions exist (nonprofits, brick-and-mortar shops with 2+ years under the same name, certain financial institutions, etc.), but you’ll need to comb the law (I'll include the link in the comments) to see if you qualify. ✨ Next steps: Audit your SMS marketing practices now. If you send texts to Texas residents, talk to legal counsel or the Texas SOS office so you’re not losing an entire chunk of your SMS subscribers (or paying a large fine). Nothing kills a successful and lucrative campaign faster than a compliance fine. 🪩

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Great to speak at RoofCon here in Oklahoma. 🗣️ The topic: AEO, Answer Engine Optimization, and why it matters right now. SEO alone is not going to cut it in 2026. ❌ People are no longer just typing keywords into Google. They are asking ChatGPT and other LLMs direct questions and expecting clear recommendations in return. That shift changes everything. This year is less about rankings and more about being the recommended answer. If your brand is not showing up in those conversations, you are invisible where decisions are actually being made. Search is evolving fast. The businesses that adapt early will win the next wave. #aoiferoche #aiqueen #aeo #seo

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Eyes on your own paper! 👀 Remember hearing that in school? What if I told you that the same rule applies to your paid media spend? A lot of paid media managers will spend time investigating what their competitors are doing...where are they spending? what are they bidding on? My guest on Closing Time this week, Jonathan Bland from Omni Lab, says he's not terribly interested in that. You'll never get the full picture of how that spend is really working for your competitor, e.g. what the close rate for those leads are. So why bother? Instead, Jonathan says to spend that time and effort in listening to sales calls. Learn how your in-funnel prospects are talking about you. What phrases are they using to discover your services? What terms? It's a much better use of your time. I could have spend hours talking to Jonathan. We went over topics like seasonal price hikes, competitive categories, challenger brands, and more. Catch the full episode on the Insightly CRM by Unbounce YouTube channel.

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