3 Major SEO Predictions for 2016
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2016 is just around the corner. Learn the 3 must-have SEO tactics for a successful lead generation strategy in 2016.
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3 Major SEO Predictions for 2016
- 2. #123webinar It’s all about sales-qualified leads. Not just clicks and traffic. Organic Search SEM & Display Advertising Social Media Advertising Conversion Optimization Content Creation ROI Reporting
- 3. #123webinar 1PREP FOR THE PENDING PENGUIN UPDATE
- 4. #123webinar The penguin is coming back. Source: SearchEngineLand, “How to Prep for the Pending Penguin Update & Ensure You’re Penalty Free in 2016.” And, it’ll be here before we ring in the New Year!
- 5. #123webinar The penguin is coming back. 4.0 hates spammy link building.
- 6. #123webinar What makes 4.0 different?
- 7. #123webinar Good link building still exists. Analyze competitor link building strategies to get started. Link Type Link Position
- 8. #123webinar Just in case, here’s your recovery plan: 2 3 Get a list of your inbound links from Google Search Console. Ask the link source to remove the link. Use the Google disavow tool on all bad links. Conduct a link profile audit to identify bad links. 1 4 Resubmit your site for Google reconsideration.5
- 9. #123webinar Links are a factor in Google’s new patent. Source: SearchEngineLand, “3 Google Patents You Need to Know About in 2016.” The “Onsite and Offsite Search Ranking” patent application may bring a version of Page Rank back into play. This means onsite content trust signals may be based on : 2 3 Semantic search in relation to search queries. The position of the page content within the site architecture. The links to a page from other pages in the site. 1
- 10. #123webinar Links are a factor in Google’s new patent. Source: SearchEngineLand, “3 Google Patents You Need to Know About in 2016.” While offsite content trust signals may be based on : 2 3 Number of links to a page from other related pages. Relevant data about sites affiliated with that page. Number of times a page ranks for a search query. 1
- 11. #123webinar 2PREPARE FOR RICH ANSWERS TO BE EVEN BIGGER
- 12. #123webinar Rich answers are already a big deal. In fact, they’ve grown from 22.6% of search queries in December 2014 to 31.2% in July 2015! Source: Google, “Learning the Meaning Behind Words.” Google rich answers grew significantly over the first half of 2015.
- 13. #123webinar Rich answers are already a big deal. Here’s an example.
- 14. #123webinar RankBrain is the proprietary artificial intelligence used by Google to process and rank search queries.
- 15. #123webinar Although just announced on October 26th, RankBrain already handles 15% of searches.
- 16. #123webinar Source: Washington Post, “Google Turning Its Lucrative Web Search Over to AI Machines” “RankBrain has become the third-most important signal contributing to the result of a search query.”
- 17. #123webinar Make sure schema markup is on point. Similar to Knowledge Graph, RankBrain is improving entity search. Source: Google, “Learning the Meaning Behind Words.” Google crawlers scan to evaluate relevancy. Schema makes it easier!
- 18. #123webinar Schema tells Google what data actually means rather than what it says. Source: Kissmetrics, “How to Boost Your SEO by Using Schema Markup.” vs. Make sure schema markup is on point.
- 19. #123webinar Schema can help optimize the following entities: Source: Kissmetrics, “How to Boost Your SEO by Using Schema Markup.” 2 3 1 4 Articles Book reviews TV episodes and ratings Restaurants 5 Local businesses 6 7 8 Events Software applications Movies Products9 Make sure schema markup is on point.
- 20. #123webinar Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can guide you through the code Make sure schema markup is on point.
- 21. #123webinar Then test with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. Make sure schema markup is on point.
- 22. #123webinar 1 2 Processing the 15% of search queries that Google has never seen before. Improving search results for long tail keywords. What is RankBrain’s role in Google search? 3 Helping to better categorize pages based on overall content – not keywords.
- 23. #123webinar 3OPTIMIZE FOR A BETTER UX, ESPECIALLY ACROSS DEVICES.
- 24. #123webinar 1 Bounce rate2 CTR 3 Login data4 Time on site Google knows if your site is boring. Optimize for a better UX.
- 25. #123webinar Revisit your navigation structure. How many clicks does it take to convert ? Optimize for a better UX.
- 26. #123webinar Mobile UX plays a major role. By the end of 2020, Gartner expects 25 billion “things” to be connected to the internet.
- 27. #123webinar Mobile UX plays a major role. Late last year there was the release of mobile-friendly search label update, and this year AMP is Google’s anticipated mobile improvement initiative. The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is an open source initiative that embodies the vision that publishers can create mobile optimized content once and have it load instantly everywhere. Source: AmpProject.Org
- 28. #123webinar800.619.1570 results@webmarketing123.com . Deliver more sales-qualified leads. Chat with our team and learn how we can help build a better pipeline today.
- 29. #123webinar QUESTIONS? ASK AWAY! Thanks! Robyn Winner, Webmarketing123 Sr. Campaign Manager, SEO
Editor's Notes
- Hello! Welcome to today’s webinar. I’m Robyn Winner, Sr. SEO Campaign Manager here at Webmarketing123, and today’s we’ll be chatting about “3 Major SEO Predictions for 2016.”
- Before we get started, I wanted to give a little background on us. Webmarketing123 is a B2B digital marketing agency based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We partner with our clients to drive more sales-qualified leads – not just clicks and traffic. Also, just a few notes on some of our frequently asked webinar questions. Yes, we will send out a link to the recording after the webinar this week. If you have questions, feel free to either type them in the Q&A chat or use #123webinar to chat with our team on Twitter. We’ll also have a live Q&A session at the end of the webinar.
- 1. Prep for the pending Penguin update
- The next Penguin update is on it’s way! Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes confirmed it’ll be here before the end of 2015. This means it’s high time to take proactive steps to making sure your site has a clean link profile and ensure you know how to build a sustainable (or in other words, non-spammy) link building strategy. But, first let’s talk a little more about what we expect this Penguin update to bring.
- The Penguin algorithm is Google’s way of punishing websites with spammy link building practices. This one is a big deal since there has not been since December 2014. For marketers that were dinged by 3.0 a year ago, this will be your big chance to recover search rankings. For everyone else, it’s a healthy reminder to stick to link building best practices.
- What makes Penguin 4.0 different? 4.0 is expected to be a real-time version of Penguin, meaning that as Google crawls spammy links, sites could be docked immediately, but also rewarded quickly when spammy links are removed. In other words, we won’t have to wait for long periods of time between Penguin updates for search ranking impact. Now, let’s talk about what your link building strategy should look like…
- A lot of marketers have shied away from link building due to over zealous Penguin warnings, but the truth is links are still one of the most heavily weighted factors in SEO. This means you absolutely need to have a strategy around it. The caveat is that you have to do the “right” way, which means building a diverse link portfolio from reputable, influential sites. One of the best ways to get started is to run a competitor analysis and see how your link volume, authority, position, and type stack up to the top performers in your industry. Pro Tip! We use a tool called Cognitive SEO to help us our with this backlink analysis.
- But, if you’ve been dinged by Penguin in the past, launch your recovery plan NOW. First, get a list of your inbound links using Google Webmaster tools. Identify the bad or spammy links in that list. First, try asking the link source to remove the link. If that does not work, use the Google disavow tool to report the suspect links. Finally, resubmit your site for Google’s reconsideration. If you’re diligent about keeping a clean link profile, you’ll be very likely to make it through the next Penguin update unscathed.
- Plus, to really emphasize that links matter and will continue to matter, links are a built-in ranking signal within one of Google’s new patents.
- #2. Prepare for rich answers to be even bigger.
- First, it’s important to understand that rich answer are already a big deal. They grew significantly over the first half of 2015.
- Not sure what a rich answer is? Here’s an example.
- Not to mention we’ve recently been introduced to RankBrain.
- Although just announced on October 26th, RankBrain had been around for a few months now and already handles 15% of searches. Compared to previous search algorithm update announcements, RankBrain is a big deal. Penguin 3.0 impacted <1% , while Panda 4.0 impacted 7.5%, for example.
- In a recent interview with Washington Post, Greg Corrado, senior research scientist at Google, even revealed that “RankBrain has become the third-most important signal contributing to the results of a search query.” Now while this is admittedly a bit vague (for example, what does that mean for #1 and #2?) this does demonstrate that RankBrain is not only an important tool in processing search queries, it also plays a significant role ranking them.
- Make sure your schema markup is on point. Entity search is Google’s ability to understand the relationship of people, places, and things without relying on a string of letters (or keywords) to piece the puzzle together. This is often referred to as the move from “strings” to “things.”: http://searchengineland.com/rankbrain-changes-entity-search-234345 As Google improves this concept of entity search, it gets closer and closer to interpreting search queries like a human might. That’s where the investment in artificial intelligence comes in. In this example, Google explains in a recent blog post how their technology allows computers to learn the concept of capital cities just by scanning news articles. Schema markup is a technical SEO element that can help Google crawlers understand what your page is about and deliver rich answers.
- For those of you not familiar with Schema markup, Schema is essentially a way for marketers and webmasters to give search engines more information about their website. Schema markup tells Google what your data actually means rather than just what it says. Kissmetrics wrote about a good example of Schema at work: If an HTML tag reads <h1>Avatar</h1> this is just telling the browser to display the word “Avatar” in the heading 1 format. However, a search engine would have a hard time telling whether you’re talking about the popular movie or just a type of profile picture. In this way, Schema markup helps deliver more relevant content to the user, which search engines will reward you for.
- ROBYN Schema can help you optimize the following entities (Read 1-9): articles, software applications, events, and products may all apply to B2B marketers.
- ROBYN Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can help guide you through the code.
- You can then test the implemented schema with Google Structured Data Testing Tool.
- To recap, RankBrain is expected to perform 3 functions in Google search: 1. Processing the 15% of of search queries that Google has never seen before. 2. Improving Google search results for long tail keywords. 3. Helping to better categorize pages based on content. (This third one is an educated guess on how RankBrain contribution to actually ranking results vs. processing results in the first two. That being said, while Google confirmed RankBrain does impact rank, it did not specifiy how.) Plus, Google also filed a patent for using schema for SERP deduplication. Just more evidence that schema markup is going to be a must-have in 2016!
- Finally, optimize for a better UX, especially across devices.
- Second, optimize for a better user experience. While this isn’t necessarily part of RankBrain, Google is smart enough to know whether or not your site is boring. Overall, organic search is moving toward a behavior based ranking system. Here are the factors that play a role: CTR Bounce rate Time on site Login data (Reference the patent for Google.)
- That means your website needs to answer “What can I do here?” and “Why should I do it?” in under 15 seconds. Your page should clearly tell the user what they should do: Download an eBook, register for a webinar, get a consultation, etc. Make it easy to convert. Revisit your navigation structure. Where are users dropping off?
- Mobile will obviously play an important role in designing a modern UX. Believe it or not, the Internet of Things is growing fast. By the end of 2020, Gartner expects 25 billion “things” will be connected to the internet. If your site is not mobile-friendly, you MUST plan to address this in 2016.
- Late last year there was the release of mobile-friendly search label update, and this year AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is Google’s anticipated mobile improvement initiative to release in early 2016. AMP is essentially an open source code initiative that will help brands optimize content to load quickly on mobile. AMP already works on Twitter and Google has hint their implementation of AMP could impact mobile search rankings, as well. For brands with timely content especially, this is definitely something to consider testing sooner rather than later.
- Before we kickoff Q&A, I wanted to invite everyone to chat with our team and learn how we can help build a better sales pipeline with digital today. If you’re interested, feel free to let us know in the GoToWebinar chat or drop us a line at “results@webmarketing123.com”, On our discovery call, we’ll analyze your current digital marketing strategy and cover: Actionable tips to drive more sales-qualified leads from digital. How to measure digital marketing ROI directly within your CRM. How you stack up against your competitors.
- Thank you! And with that, let’s start the Q&A. Lauren – Do we have any questions from the audience?