Text-heavy notes and key takeaways from the SEO tracks I attended in Dallas, Texas for the State of Search conference on October 9th and 10th.
Slideshares referenced:
https://www.slideshare.net/crumplezone/paradigm-shifts-can-seo-survive-google
https://www.slideshare.net/johnleoweber/state-of-search-2017-cross-channel-marketing-by-john-leo-weber?qid=5ae4f63a-59dc-4e05-82c3-a67c5af6ef8c&v=&b=&from_search=7
https://www.slideshare.net/jonhenshaw/forget-amp-make-fast-sites?qid=44296fcd-b690-4fd4-bd75-467cdc6aaff5&v=&b=&from_search=1
https://www.slideshare.net/goralewicz/javascript-indexing-and-seo-the-naked-truth-state-of-search-2017-80617471
https://www.slideshare.net/MarthavanBerkel/structured-data-from-az-managing-your-knowledge-graph-state-of-search?qid=3d2086c7-af58-4036-8767-71394027902e&v=&b=&from_search=1
https://www.slideshare.net/TomAnthony/seo-by-hypothesis
https://www.slideshare.net/DawnFitton/cruft-busting-technical-debt-code-smell-and-refactoring-for-seo-state-of-search
https://www.slideshare.net/alanbleiweiss/owning-the-answer-box-knowledge-graph-and-featured-snippets
Content Marketing for B2B: Aligning Storytelling to Lead GenerationDigital Vidya
Explore effective content marketing strategy for B2B businesses. Gain insights from webinar on 'Content Marketing For B2B: Aligning Storytelling To Lead Generation' led by Bianca Ghose, Global Head – Content Marketing, HCL Technologies.
BrightonSEO March 2021 | Dan Taylor, Image Entity TagsDan Taylor
My talk from BrightonSEO 2021; focusing on using Google's image category labels (glancing into the Knowledge Graph and Google's image annotation processes) for better topic research and content optimization.
Strategy Deck#1 - Digital Marketing - Driving Organic Traffic In 30 DaysXerago
To cope up with evolving search algorithms and changing audience requirements, we follow a three-step approach that will help a website rank high on search engines.
How To Get a 100% Lighthouse Performance Score Polly Pospelova
This talk walks you through what it takes get a 100% Lighthouse performance score for your website. It gives you real examples of the types of optimisation you need to do, and more importantly, what it will achieve. You will learn what earns you the most points and where to focus your efforts.
Content Marketing for B2B: Aligning Storytelling to Lead GenerationDigital Vidya
Explore effective content marketing strategy for B2B businesses. Gain insights from webinar on 'Content Marketing For B2B: Aligning Storytelling To Lead Generation' led by Bianca Ghose, Global Head – Content Marketing, HCL Technologies.
BrightonSEO March 2021 | Dan Taylor, Image Entity TagsDan Taylor
My talk from BrightonSEO 2021; focusing on using Google's image category labels (glancing into the Knowledge Graph and Google's image annotation processes) for better topic research and content optimization.
Strategy Deck#1 - Digital Marketing - Driving Organic Traffic In 30 DaysXerago
To cope up with evolving search algorithms and changing audience requirements, we follow a three-step approach that will help a website rank high on search engines.
How To Get a 100% Lighthouse Performance Score Polly Pospelova
This talk walks you through what it takes get a 100% Lighthouse performance score for your website. It gives you real examples of the types of optimisation you need to do, and more importantly, what it will achieve. You will learn what earns you the most points and where to focus your efforts.
Plerdy's CRO/UX_Party February 2021 - Dan Taylor - SEO & UXDan Taylor
My slides from the Plerdy CRO/UX conference in February 2021, in which I discussed the relationship between SEO and UX, and how we can improve one to benefit the other.
LAC 2019: Voice Search Opportunities In iGamingDan Taylor
Dan Taylor's presentation from #LAC2019, looking at how voice search can be used by betting and gambling brands, and how they can plan content and efforts around user touch-points.
Speed & Performance Optimisation: How to Meet Users' High Expectations - Rach...DeepCrawl
This talk aims to change mindsets from focusing on traditional speed metrics, to thinking about how users actually perceive page load and what their priorities are in order to have positive user experience, and what we can do as SEOs and marketers to optimise for those crucial aspects.
The State of the Web: Pagination and Infinite ScrollAdam Gent
Providing recommendations on how to optimize pagination (post rel=next and rel=prev) based on results of testing pagination and infinite scroll in the wild.
How to Make a Killer Landing Page: Critical Best Practices for Converting Org...lorloski
Originally presented at #inbound13.
All the website traffic in the world isn’t worth a dime if you can’t convert it to leads. As a marketer, landing pages are the most powerful conversion tool you have. In this presentation, you’ll learn the critical elements of landing page design for both organic and paid traffic (yes, they’re different!). It covers everything from best practices of page structure, content, and style to different strategies for successful lead capture and subsequent engagement. You’ll get the tools you need to pump up the conversion power of your website -- and lower your cost per lead!
SearchLeeds 2017 - Mathew Court, SEO Consultant - Auto Trader - Mobile first ...Branded3
With Google beginning to test mobile first indexing, being just desktop friendly isn’t good enough anymore. This session will cover what we know of the update and how the different areas of Auto Trader are combating this change.
Michael King of iPullRank discusses Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing and Text Analysis and how to leverage it to improve Search Engine Optimization.
Are you there Page Experience? It's Me, DevTools.Rachel Anderson
With Google's Page Experience ranking signal update rolling out in May 2021, you're running out of time to put in the budget line items for all the fancy SEO tools you'll need! Don't panic. Rachel and Jamie will show you how to optimize for humans (and algorithm updates) using an underestimated SEO ally: Chrome DevTools.
SEO In 2022: Google Discover and Microsite SERPs - (SEMrush Webinar)Evolving SEO
My presentation for the SEMrush webinar with Aleyda Solis and Mordy Oberstein on the Biggest Developments in SEO in 2021 and what to do about them in 2022. I focused on Google Discover and Google's SERP 'Microsites'.
SearchLove London 2015 | Philip Nottingham | Building a Social Video StrategyDistilled
The world of social video is becoming increasingly convoluted, with Facebook and Twitter having launched native video platforms within the last 12 months, but how should marketers’ approach react to this? Should YouTube be the main platform brands focus on, or should the others now take precedence? Phil will explain how you can work out where to invest, what works and why, and then explain how SEOs and those from a digital background have an inherent advantage in taking ownership of social video strategy.
Presentation about SEO for IAB Belgium @Google Offices BXL (intermediate level)
TOC:
- The SEO Pyramid
- Which ranking factors matter
- SEO trends
- SEO Migration
- New sites & SEO
- Social Media & SEO
- International SEO
- Local SEO
- Video & Image SEO
- Keyword Research (finally done right)
- Optimizing your website / writing content
The web is rapidly evolving towards using more and more Single Page Applications / JavaScript driven websites and understanding the effects on SEO performance is key to be a successful technical SEO. Instead of depending on clients issues with SEO and debugging those, I used the 10 most popular JS frameworks myself and setup 10 websites. During the sessions I will share the expected and unexpected things that happened.
Plerdy's CRO/UX_Party February 2021 - Dan Taylor - SEO & UXDan Taylor
My slides from the Plerdy CRO/UX conference in February 2021, in which I discussed the relationship between SEO and UX, and how we can improve one to benefit the other.
LAC 2019: Voice Search Opportunities In iGamingDan Taylor
Dan Taylor's presentation from #LAC2019, looking at how voice search can be used by betting and gambling brands, and how they can plan content and efforts around user touch-points.
Speed & Performance Optimisation: How to Meet Users' High Expectations - Rach...DeepCrawl
This talk aims to change mindsets from focusing on traditional speed metrics, to thinking about how users actually perceive page load and what their priorities are in order to have positive user experience, and what we can do as SEOs and marketers to optimise for those crucial aspects.
The State of the Web: Pagination and Infinite ScrollAdam Gent
Providing recommendations on how to optimize pagination (post rel=next and rel=prev) based on results of testing pagination and infinite scroll in the wild.
How to Make a Killer Landing Page: Critical Best Practices for Converting Org...lorloski
Originally presented at #inbound13.
All the website traffic in the world isn’t worth a dime if you can’t convert it to leads. As a marketer, landing pages are the most powerful conversion tool you have. In this presentation, you’ll learn the critical elements of landing page design for both organic and paid traffic (yes, they’re different!). It covers everything from best practices of page structure, content, and style to different strategies for successful lead capture and subsequent engagement. You’ll get the tools you need to pump up the conversion power of your website -- and lower your cost per lead!
SearchLeeds 2017 - Mathew Court, SEO Consultant - Auto Trader - Mobile first ...Branded3
With Google beginning to test mobile first indexing, being just desktop friendly isn’t good enough anymore. This session will cover what we know of the update and how the different areas of Auto Trader are combating this change.
Michael King of iPullRank discusses Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing and Text Analysis and how to leverage it to improve Search Engine Optimization.
Are you there Page Experience? It's Me, DevTools.Rachel Anderson
With Google's Page Experience ranking signal update rolling out in May 2021, you're running out of time to put in the budget line items for all the fancy SEO tools you'll need! Don't panic. Rachel and Jamie will show you how to optimize for humans (and algorithm updates) using an underestimated SEO ally: Chrome DevTools.
SEO In 2022: Google Discover and Microsite SERPs - (SEMrush Webinar)Evolving SEO
My presentation for the SEMrush webinar with Aleyda Solis and Mordy Oberstein on the Biggest Developments in SEO in 2021 and what to do about them in 2022. I focused on Google Discover and Google's SERP 'Microsites'.
SearchLove London 2015 | Philip Nottingham | Building a Social Video StrategyDistilled
The world of social video is becoming increasingly convoluted, with Facebook and Twitter having launched native video platforms within the last 12 months, but how should marketers’ approach react to this? Should YouTube be the main platform brands focus on, or should the others now take precedence? Phil will explain how you can work out where to invest, what works and why, and then explain how SEOs and those from a digital background have an inherent advantage in taking ownership of social video strategy.
Presentation about SEO for IAB Belgium @Google Offices BXL (intermediate level)
TOC:
- The SEO Pyramid
- Which ranking factors matter
- SEO trends
- SEO Migration
- New sites & SEO
- Social Media & SEO
- International SEO
- Local SEO
- Video & Image SEO
- Keyword Research (finally done right)
- Optimizing your website / writing content
The web is rapidly evolving towards using more and more Single Page Applications / JavaScript driven websites and understanding the effects on SEO performance is key to be a successful technical SEO. Instead of depending on clients issues with SEO and debugging those, I used the 10 most popular JS frameworks myself and setup 10 websites. During the sessions I will share the expected and unexpected things that happened.
Join 20-year SEO veteran Ryan Huser as he explores the transformative intersection of Generative AI and SEO in his talk, "Generative AI: The new Wild West of SEO". The presentation will discuss how tech giants Bing and Google have enhanced the search experience using Generative AI. It will also unpack the wealth of options available to marketers, and how they can use these innovations for content creation and search engine optimization. Ryan's talk promises to offer invaluable insights into the emerging landscape of AI-driven SEO, emphasizing its profound implications for digital marketing strategies.
Takeaways:
Gain in-depth knowledge on what Generative AI is, how it was developed, and how search engines have recently implemented it for users. Learn how to properly utilize the correct Generative AI prompts and workflows to streamline your SEO efforts and accomplish exponentially better results, with specific examples. Understand how this profound development will impact the future of SEO, content creation and digital marketing for the world.
Andreas Dzumla — Google's Hogging Half Your Traffic: How to Get it BackSemrush
These slides were presented at the SEMrush webinar "Google is Hogging Half Your Traffic: How to Get It Back". Video replay and transcript are available at https://www.semrush.com/webinars/google-is-hogging-half-your-traffic-how-to-get-it-back/
SEO 101 for Venues: Key Learnings from 25 Website Audits in 4 WeeksEtix
When our in-house Lead SEO Specialist, Erika, pitched the idea of completing an SEO Audit Marathon, the first reaction from the rest of the team was obviously “challenge accepted.”
Rockhouse’s SEO Specialists got to work, and by the 4 week mark, all 25 participating clients received beautifully packaged and actionable SEO Audits in their inboxes. As we reflected on our key findings, we realized that we had developed best practices that could drive impact on ticket sales for anyone in the entertainment industry .
Join 20-year SEO veteran Ryan Huser as he explores the transformative intersection of Generative AI and SEO in his talk, "Generative AI: The new Wild West of SEO". The presentation will discuss how tech giants Bing and Google have enhanced the search experience using Generative AI. It will also unpack the wealth of options available to marketers, and how they can use these innovations for content creation and search engine optimization. Ryan's talk promises to offer invaluable insights into the emerging landscape of AI-driven SEO, emphasizing its profound implications for digital marketing strategies.
Takeaways:
Gain in-depth knowledge on what Generative AI is, how it was developed, and how search engines have recently implemented it for users. Learn how to properly utilize the correct Generative AI prompts and workflows to streamline your SEO efforts and accomplish exponentially better results, with specific examples. Understand how this profound development will impact the future of SEO, content creation and digital marketing for the world.
SEO Trends for 2014 - Smart Insights Digital Marketing PrioritiesDigital Juggler
This is a presentation I gave for the Smart Insights Digital Marketing priorities webinar series on why SEO is still important in 2014 and key trends to look out for.
Installing and inputting Yoast SEO fields is pretty easy. But there’s more to great search engine optimization than just that! Data structuring, Search Console data… What’s important, what’s not, and how will WordPress SEO change with Gutenberg? We’ll go into it all from strategy to execution tips.
SEO for Travel Companies in 2018. What's changed, what you need to know and do. These slides cover landscape changes and the current state of SEO for Travel Companies in 2018. It covers aspects of technical SEO for travel companies, content creation specific to the travel sector, as well as how to boost authority signals and link building for travel companies in 2018.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization tools are meant to accelerate the effort of achieving something significant in digital marketing sense. This is why, today we've come up with the 5 must have SEO tools that you shall need to accomplish your target.
Let's have a look.
Pretty enticing, huh? Personally we use Google Analytics and Moz and the outcome is quite alluring. Don't forget to knock in case of any question or confusion.
DMSSO 2016 - The Real State of SEO in 2016 and Beyond @nagyseoRobert Nagy
Should we still build links, track rankings and optimize our sites' pages in 2017? Should we look at SEO split testing or A/B testing; should we still care about 30x pages, should we use canonical tags to keep certain pages out of Googlebot; should we look at inlining our CSS and JS? Do we know for a fact that a mobile page loading fast will rank you higher?
Robert is CEO, Director of Digital Services at nagySEO, a fast growing digital agency in Southampton, England. Robert has over 10 years in-depth knowledge and experience in technical SEO, on-site and off-site optimisation. He often runs 1-to-1 SEO sessions and workshops for marketing teams. Robert supports local SMBs and SMEs from sectors including retail, consumer, health, consulting and financial services based across the UK, Europe and Channel Islands.
Robert was a featured speaker at Digital Marketing Summit Southampton 2016 - a series of events created for marketers in South of England. Eventz.Digital creates and hosts events which cover all aspects of digital marketing including paid search, SEO, mobile, e-Commerce and much more.
Eventz.Digital will inspire you to find effective solutions to the real problems you face every day and help you connect with like-minded people. With an action-packed agenda, inspiring key-note presentations and practical workshops, brace yourself for game-changing, dynamic, full-on events.
Key partners include Google UK, Google Capital, Digital Garage, Creative Network South, Business South, Hampshire & Isle of Wight Business Alliance and Digital South.
Similar to DFWSEM State of Search Conference 2017 | SEO Recap (20)
Data-Driven SEO: Correlation Does Not Equal CausationRenee Girard
Data-Driven SEO: Correlation Does Not Equal Causation
Talk for Mississippi State University's Advanced Statistics Class, 11/2020
TLDR: https://starwarsintrocreator.kassellabs.io/#!/CMLLbd91eqIcOecTDDtN
SEO Resources: http://bit.ly/seo-tools-2018
SEO: Just Enough To Be Dangerous Today, Tomorrow & BeyondRenee Girard
Organic Search is the effective and cheap fuel that’s built to sustain your acquisition engine for years. Learn how Google search works and what you need to do today to ensure your users can discover your website easier through Search Engine Optimization.
What is SEO and why should I care?
How does Google search work?
Making the business case for SEO and SEO integration
Hot topics for the future
What to do about them so you can sleep at night
- Voice search
- Mobile and emerging technologies
- The ever-shrinking organic SERP
(Mostly) Free SEO Tools >> http://bit.ly/seo-tools-2018
Event >> https://www.thevalleymke.org/events/seo
MKEsearch 2018 | CSI: Forensic SEO AuditsRenee Girard
Intro to SEO Forensics >> bit.ly/audit-blog-2018
(Mostly) Free SEO Tools >> bit.ly/seo-tools-2018
SVS Tutorial >> bit.ly/svs-tutorial
SVS Matrix >> bit.ly/pubcon-svs
Revisions made post-Pubcon Florida for the MKEsearch event:
When to do log file analysis -- NEW
Mobile assessment for mobile-first indexing -- NEW
Rendering assessment from Google I/O -- NEW
Event >> https://mkesearch.org/upcoming-events/seo-planning-site-migrations-and-csi-seo-audits
More Traffic. More Business. How to Boost Your Blog Traffic with SEORenee Girard
Learn how to use the basics of search engine optimization to gain new readers to your blog. Used in conjunction with the One Metric Blog Scorecard found here: http://bit.ly/blog-scorecard
Authors: Renee Girard and Lindsie Nelson
How traffic acquisition and engagement drive digital marketing strategies.
Guest lecture for Assistant Professor of Marketing, Brian Spaid, Ph.D. for October 2015
Didn't get to go to SMX Advanced? Lucky for you, I've put together the major highlights from all the organic track sessions. Enjoy!
Credit to all the amazing presenters: Jenny Halasz, Jessica Bowman, Rand Fishkin, Marcus Tober, Eric Enge, Maile Ohye, and Christine Smith.
http://www.slideshare.net/SearchMarketingExpo/technical-seo-signals-you-need-to-send-to-google
http://www.slideshare.net/SearchMarketingExpo/what-happened-by-jessica-bowman
http://www.slideshare.net/SearchMarketingExpo/periodic-table-of-seo-ranking-factors-2015-edition-by-marcus-tober
http://www.slideshare.net/SearchMarketingExpo/googles-rich-answers-in-search-how-to-make-them-work-for-you-by-ericenge
http://www.slideshare.net/SearchMarketingExpo/ranking-signals-of-the-future-where-engines-might-be-heading-by-rand-fishkin
http://www.slideshare.net/SearchMarketingExpo/tales-of-an-seo-detective-by-christine-smith
Local SEO and Local PPC: Pigeon, Paid, & PlacesRenee Girard
Local Search is loco! Renee and Cassy break things down with the basics on how local search actually works, key ranking factors (citations, review, backlinks, on-page), and placement opportunities for organic and paid results.
LOCAL PPC:
- Setting up geo-targeting
- Defining reach
- Measuring performance
- Adjusting bids (use data, duh)
- Link Google My Business to AdWords
LOCAL SEO:
- Google Pigeon
- Algorithm ranking factors
- Claim citations
- Verify Google My Business
- Get reviews
Local or Bust! An Intro to Google Local & All Things Links - WordCamp MKE 201...Renee Girard
It’s free, easy, and literally takes less than 10 minutes to set up your business on Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+. The world of local search is only growing and can help your business get found by searchers faster than they would have.
Senior Search Marketing Specialists, Rachel and Renee will walk you through the basics of setting up your Google Local profiles then cover the following topics:
Enhancing your listings
Building local citations
Acquiring external links
Even though Google’s algorithms change hundreds of times each year, there are some things that remain constant…links…the currency of the web. Yes, even when it comes to local search, links still make up a large percentage of the pie.
A.I. (artificial intelligence) platforms are popping up all the time, and many of them can and should be used to help grow your brand, increase your sales and decrease your marketing costs.In this presentation:We will review some of the best AI platforms that are available for you to use.We will interact with some of the platforms in real-time, so attendees can see how they work.We will also look at some current brands that are using AI to help them create marketing messages, saving them time and money in the process. Lastly, we will discuss the pros and cons of using AI in marketing & branding and have a lively conversation that includes comments from the audience.
Key Takeaways:
Attendees will learn about LLM platforms, like ChatGPT, and how they work, with preset examples and real time interactions with the platform. Attendees will learn about other AI platforms that are creating graphic design elements at the push of a button...pre-set examples and real-time interactions.Attendees will discuss the pros & cons of AI in marketing + branding and share their perspectives with one another. Attendees will learn about the cost savings and the time savings associated with using AI, should they choose to.
Come learn how YOU can Animate and Illuminate the World with Generative AI's Explosive Power. Come sit in the driver's seat and learn to harness this great technology.
As the call for for skilled experts continues to develop, investing in quality education and education from a reputable https://www.safalta.com/online-digital-marketing/best-digital-marketing-institute-in-noida Digital advertising institute in Noida can lead to a a success career on this eve
When most people in the industry talk about online or digital reputation management, what they're really saying is Google search and PPC. And it's usually reactive, left dealing with the aftermath of negative information published somewhere online. That's outdated. It leaves executives, organizations and other high-profile individuals at a high risk of a digital reputation attack that spans channels and tactics. But the tools needed to safeguard against an attack are more cybersecurity-oriented than most marketing and communications professionals can manage. Business leaders Leaders grasp the importance; 83% of executives place reputation in their top five areas of risk, yet only 23% are confident in their ability to address it. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, you need to turn online reputation on its axis and think like an attacker.\
Key Takeaways:
- New framework for examining and safeguarding an online reputation
- Tools and techniques to keep you a step ahead
- Practical examples that demonstrate when to act, how to act and how to recover
5 big bets to drive growth in 2024 without one additional marketing dollar AND how to adapt to the biggest shifting eCommerce trend- AI.
1) Romance Your Customers - Retention
2) ‘Alternative’ Lead Gen - Advocacy
3) The Beautiful Basics - Conversion Rate Optimization
4) Land that Bottom Line - Profitability
5) Roll the Dice - New Business Models
The Secret to Engaging Modern Consumers: Journey Mapping and Personalization
In today's digital landscape, understanding the customer's journey and delivering personalized experiences are paramount. This masterclass delves into the art of consumer journey mapping, a powerful technique that visualizes the entire customer experience across touchpoints. Attendees will learn how to create detailed journey maps, identify pain points, and uncover opportunities for optimization. The presentation also explores personalization strategies that leverage data and technology to tailor content, products, and experiences to individual customers. From real-time personalization to predictive analytics, attendees will gain insights into cutting-edge approaches that drive engagement and loyalty.
Key Takeaways:
Current consumer landscape; Steps to mapping an effective consumer journey; Understanding the value of personalization; Integrating mapping and personalization for success; Brands that are getting It right!; Best Practices; Future Trends
Google Ads Vs Social Media Ads-A comparative analysisakashrawdot
Explore the differences, advantages, and strategies of using Google Ads vs Social Media Ads for online advertising. This presentation will provide insights into how each platform operates, their unique features, and how they can be leveraged to achieve marketing goals.
In today's digital world, customers are just a click away. "Grow Your Business Online: Introduction to Digital Marketing" dives into the exciting world of digital marketing, equipping you with the tools and strategies to reach new audiences, expand your reach, and ultimately grow your business.
website = https://digitaldiscovery.institute/
address = C 210 A Industrial Area, Phase 8B, Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar, Punjab 140308
10 Video Ideas Any Business Can Make RIGHT NOW!
You'll never draw a blank again on what kind of video to make for your business. Go beyond the basic categories and truly reimagine a brand new advanced way to brainstorm video content creation. During this masterclass you'll be challenged to think creatively and outside of the box and view your videos through lenses you may have never thought of previously. It's guaranteed that you'll leave with more than 10 video ideas, but I like to under-promise and over-deliver. Don't miss this session.
Key Takeaways:
How to use the Video Matrix
How to use additional "Lenses"
Where to source original video ideas
First Things First: Building and Effective Marketing Strategy
Too many companies (and marketers) jump straight into activation planning without formalizing a marketing strategy. It may seem tedious, but analyzing the mindset of your targeted audiences and identifying the messaging points most likely to resonate with them is time well spent. That process is also a great opportunity for marketers to collaborate with sales leaders and account managers on a galvanized go-to-market approach. I’ll walk you through the methods and tools we use with our clients to ensure campaign success.
Key Takeaways:
-Recognize the critical role of strategy in marketing
-Learn our approach for building an actionable, effective marketing strategy
-Receive templates and guides for developing a marketing strategy
SEO as the Backbone of Digital MarketingFelipe Bazon
In this talk Felipe Bazon will share how him and his team at Hedgehog Digital share our journey of making C-Levels alike, specially CMOS realize that SEO is the backbone of digital marketing by showing how SEO can contribute to brand awareness, reputation and authority and above all how to use SEO to create more robust global marketing strategies.
Videos are more engaging, more memorable, and more popular than any other type of content out there. That’s why it’s estimated that 82% of consumer traffic will come from videos by 2025.
And with videos evolving from landscape to portrait and experts promoting shorter clips, one thing remains constant – our brains LOVE videos.
So is there science behind what makes people absolutely irresistible on camera?
The answer: definitely yes.
In this jam-packed session with Stephanie Garcia, you’ll get your hands on a steal-worthy guide that uncovers the art and science to being irresistible on camera. From body language to words that convert, she’ll show you how to captivate on command so that viewers are excited and ready to take action.
2. SEO TRACKS – TOPIC OVERVIEW
2
Will SEO survive Google?
AMP and site speed
Cross-channel agency
JS indexing
Bill Hunt rant
Structured data and Featured Snippets
Local SEO
SEO A/B testing
SEO audits
Technical debt
Gary Illeyes Q&A
4. Attack of the ads = Level 2 risk factor
There’s a natural tension between ads and organic at Google and we need to pay attention
Local Pack ads are live on mobile and being tested on desktop
Personalized results = Level 2 risk factor
Google assistant and Google Now are disruptive to the SERP and hyper personalized but
limited since it’s query-less and it will be hard to expand
Voice search: voice of doom = Level 3 risk factor
Voice searches are removing links
Google Home can send a link to your mobile app and you can send data back to
Google Home if it makes sense like with a recipe
SHARKNADO (LOW TO HIGH RISK)
4
5. Content wars: cached = Level 3 risk factor
Images don’t take you to the website when you click on it
Google Posts serve as an intermediary of curated content
Instant Answers and KG
Things like sports, weather, lyrics, and job listings (as of July), are creating curated
experiences that are sticky
Local KP replaces terrible UX of local websites and also prevent you from directly visiting the
site by serving a map pack
Content wars: creation = Level 4 risk factor
These self-contained content experiences are expanding although only in a few niches,
especially YMYL industries and are highly disruptive
On mobile, these packs are the only experience
Google is particularly concerned with bad finance and medical results
Ex. – “plan a trip” Google travel port, humpback whale sounds allows you to play the sound,
medical KP, NYC Fashion week, tabbed content for movies and books
SHARKNADO (LOW TO HIGH RISK)
5
6. Takeaways
Prepare for further disruption
#1 concern is the increase of curated content experiences provided by Google and
their partners
#2 concern is the increase of cached content that keeps users on Google and adds an
additional step to click through to your site
Be aware of what’s going on and rollouts of changing SERP features both paid and organic
Optimizing for FS doesn’t work for all queries because voice results don’t provide the link
Pick your battles
Be careful with giving all your data away to Google (local, news, and FS is ok)
Think about short-term benefits
Seamless integration across devices is coming, likely within the next two years
Voice won’t take over, but will move between desktop >> mobile >> voice so we need to
better understand cross-device attribution
SHARKNADO (LOW TO HIGH RISK)
6
9. Each department has different goals
PPC – leads and conversions, work individually, don’t have access to site, hoard data, use different
measurements of success
SEO – rankings, keyword stuff, disregard UX
Web Design – win awards, slow down websites, code bloat, not SEO-friendly, pretty
Geek Agency changed the department structure from vertical to horizontal to be client-based teams
Cross channel marketing secret formula:
1. Develop niche-specific content
2. Use traditional SEO, PPC, and Facebook to drive traffic
3. Use trap doors to capture email address
4. Use email addresses for retargeting and look alike audiences on Facebook to identify similar people
1. Drip campaigns are free automation for Mail Chimp
2. Emails should look like they came from a real person since typically the more HTML, the less
engagement
BUILDINGACROSS CHANNELAGENCY
9
10. Takeaways
Share data and standardize goals
Communication
Shared learnings = employee happiness
Unity
Innovation
BUILDINGACROSS CHANNELAGENCY
10
12. FORGETAMP: MAKE SITES FAST
12
AMP is our punishment for ruining the internet which is horse crap because it’s Google-centric
since it’s about delivering ads faster
Faster = more traffic = more money
1. Refactor the code
Identify and test which JS and CSS code is actually used and whatever is unnecessary, get
rid of
WP is notorious for themes that are JS library intensive creating waste
Conditionally serve code only on pages that need it
Consolidate code into one file
Use inline CSS and JS
Put inline JS at the end of the pages
2. Use system fonts
Google fonts are pretty, but slow down the site and add up quickly especially when you add
weights and styles
Use system fonts that are optimized for displays
3. Optimize images
Responsive-sized images are not optimized
Optimized = serving different images on screen width through SCRSET
Automatically can be done for WP
13. MAKE SITES FAST
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4. Reduce and compress image size for PNGs and
JPGs
SVG vs. PNG vs. JPG
SVG: simple images, icons, vector
Don’t need to compress SVG
PNG: simple (8 bit) images
JPG: complex images and photos
Tool/plugin recommendations
FileOptim
WQ EWWW Image Optimizer
Doesn’t recommend TinyPNG because it
ruins image clarity
14. FORGETAMP: MAKE SITES FAST
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5. Cache, Gzip, and HTTP/2
Use Gzip via .htaccess file or via PHP at the top of templates
HTTP1 has every file from server to browser
HTTP2 is 95% faster than HTTP1 because it streams everything at the same time (single
stream)
6. Improve UX
AMP is bad UX so focus on primary purpose and consider a linear presentation of content
7. Use resource hints to speed up navigation
Enhances UX
Use prefetch to load resources in the background
Use prerender for pages you’re confident the user will visit next
Tool/plugin recommendations (use as few as possible)
WP Rocket (paid)
Checkgzipcompression.com
Gzip Resource
Free HTTP2 and SSL certificate through Cloudflare
16. JS INDEXINGAND SEO
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Background
JS is not as forgiving as HTML
HTML is easy to serve, but JS needs
to be exchanged into HTML
It all started when Google deprecated the
AJAX crawling scheme in 2015 and
announced they are able to generally
render JS like headless browsers – based
on Chrome 41
Google and JS have a complicated
relationship
Google created AngularJS so we
assume it’s ok but that’s not true as
proved in a huge JS indexing test
19. TAKEAWAYS
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Not all JS frameworks are crawled and indexed the same
Links generated by JS aren’t always crawled
Inline vs. external JS makes a huge difference
AngularJS2 always has to be server-side rendered
JS kills your crawl budget
Isomorphic JS is the ideal setup on React and Universal on Angular
Avoid JS if you care about more than Google
21. Goal #1: Help someone improve
Goal #2: Improve our industry
He wants to quit twice a week but has great clients, wins, and loves the digital community
Goal #3: Personal therapy
“Make Google your bitch and own all the results” – basically don’t fear Google and don’t panic,
prosper
“SEO’s job is to make websites that don’t deserve to rank, rank!”
“Paid search is the #1 tactic that marketers have offering precise targeting…that we squander
through crap ads”
“IT people hate SEOs because they sometimes gives bad advice from bad articles”
Celebrity SEO types
1. Speakers – don’t actually do the work, they are not technical
2. Seekers – figure it out, they are technical
3. Sheep – followers
BILLHUNT RANT
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29. Schema was originally designed by Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex back in 2011,
Structured data appears as microdata inline or in block of code as JSON-LD
Appearing in search and email
Not just about rich results, but also CTR, engagement, semantic analytics
Think of it as marketing strategy and not just code
Marketers have new job to manage brands as Knowledge Graph maps
Focus on strategy, automate the rest
Don't need to manually create JSON-LD code! Things change, manually updated
structured data is just not scalable
1. Define important things about your brand/product/service/reviews/etc.
What's unique?
2. Relationship between each thing
Explicitly define with Wikipedia
Use schema paths - free tool by Schema App helps with this
3. Map Google features
Review the 40+ features Google supports to see what else you want to add
SCHEMAMARKUP FOR NON-DEVELOPERS
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30. Maintenance
Lots of updates happening constantly (44 since January)
Data items change
Showing value
Focus on rich results - hard to measure, have GSC rich results in SA, SEMRush shows the
features, so does Moz
BI = Semantic Analytics
Ex - Adding author field in GA custom dimension
How do you measure analytics of the machine channel?
Scaling
Hard for non-developers
Can you GSC Data Highlighter but it’s super basic and can’t link to external items
Create data feeds
Plug it in in GTM
Can use plugins for WP, Shopify, and Adobe Marketing Cloud but they are basic
TOP CHALLENGES
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31. Benefits
Business intelligence
Onsite search and chat box
Competitive research
Content strategy - what do search engines think are related?
Takeaways
Rethink schema as just code to part of marketing strategy
Look into Schema App
Pull in Analytics team to scale JSON-LD via GTM
Stay up to date for Schema changes and Google features
TAKEAWAYS
31
33. Background
AMP is open source, supported by
Google and Baidu but not Bing
Initial launch was meant just for major
news sites to be added to the AMP
News Carousel on mobile and the top
stories on desktop
Thrillist converted 90% of all articles
to AMP and got a 70% lift in traffic
(custom implementation)
AMP isn’t supposed to be a direct
ranking factor, but speed matters
9to5google.com found over
half of users would prefer to
click on AMP links
AMP LESSONS
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34. Myth #1: AMP only benefits news sites
No Broker has PWA and AMP (PWAMP) and saw drops in bounce rate
PWA – when a website has access to your phone’s hardware in almost the same ways as a
native mobile app
PWA prefetches the content by predicting what page you will visit next which allows the
site to function offline
Myth #2: AMP can’t work for ecommerce
It can with AMP Live List Component and AMP Bing Component, but there’s serious issues
with analytics data tracking
http://www.myntra.com/ is an ecommerce PWAMP example and eBay is still testing it out
Myth #3: Build it and they will come
Since content is served from Google’s CDN, all engagement metrics are messed up and
pages per sessions is usually close to 1.0
“Session Stitching” is a GA tactic that can be used to rectify these tracking issues
Other common issues are omitting navigation and CTAs
Myth #4: AMP sites have to be stripped down
It’s possible to maintain your mobile design with AMP without compromising on UI
AMP LESSONS
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35. PWA + AMP = PWAMP
You must fix analytics tracking if you implement AMP or it will be inaccurate
It’s still new and coming out with new templates so expect the unexpected
Many AMP pages return errors and won’t get cached by Google
Google won’t consistently show your pages as AMP if there are errors
Integrate dynamic components to improve UX and maintain functionality as much as possible
Validate your pages using Chrome Developer Tools or another validator
https://validator.ampproject.org/
TAKEAWAYS
35
38. Crawl site
Export in spreadsheet
Get Moz rank for each then normalize MozRank
Use NetworkX or similar to in it
Then add a new page, linked from homepage then see the change - would the homepage
change in PR - could actually gain
Actually - homepage small drop in PR when adding link to another page
WEIGHTED INTERNALPR
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39. Keyword targeting
Test using SERP Turkey and Amazon Mechanical Turk
Panda and Quality
Panda created using human rather info then fed into machine learning algo to replicate
results, did algo overlay in 2011, then 2016 its part of core and live
Suggest panda surveys to capture useful customer info to prioritize efforts
Would you trust info from this website?
Is this written by experts?
Split testing
Hypothesis: page HTML is verbose, adding list of products as structured markup will make
the intent clearer, had an 11% lift but didn’t work for other sites because they didn’t have
dirty HTML
Freshness
Date annotations = important
Regularly making small updates helps freshness with dateModified itemprop, got 8%
lift in traffic
SEO SPLITTESTING
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41. Try to prove with data before launching
Ex. – Adding “Free Shipping” to the title tags for one client worked where for another it didn’t
We cannot predict rank with certainty
Even experts struggle with predictions
Move forwards with further data, build hypothesis, run tests
Free tool Distilled split tester (DistilledODN)
SERP Turkey
TAKEAWAYS
41
43. Top challenges facing marketers include:
Generating enough traffic and leads
Proving ROI
Securing enough budget
New era of consumers
Traditional >> Digital Transitional >> Digital Natives
Traditional are going away and they are offline only
Digital Transitional are more tech savvy but will do online research then buy offline
Digital Natives do everything online, are not brand loyal, want everything to be
personalized, authentic, and “not suck”
TV commercials >> Facebook ads >> Google Local
Commercials (wrong people, wrong time)
Facebook ads are personalized (right people, wrong time)
Google Local (right people, right time)
4/5 consumers use search engines to find local info
Digital is so disruptive now that companies are focusing purely on understanding digital and natives
(Air B&B and Uber own nothing)
Life expectancy of Fortune 500 companies was 75 years in 1955 and 15 years in 2015
LOCALINTENT ENGINE
43
44. Top Three Local SEO Ranking Factors:
1. User’s location
2. Relevance
3. User’s actions
Five Pillars to Enterprise Local SEO
1. Business Intelligence & Analytics – invest in a local tool
2. Data Integrity – critical to NAP consistency
1. Data sanitation
2. Data normalization
3. Data compliance
3. Preferred landing pages – PLPs, technical, and on-page SEO
1. Don’t use subdomains
2. Setup taxonomy by country >> state >> city >> neighborhood (everyone forgets about
neighborhood)
4. Digital PR – page-level backlinks, reviews, spam fighting
1. BrightLocal can trigger alerts if someone tried to change your GMB data
2. Create review funnel to automatically deter bad reviews with auto email asking for feedback
1. If happy, ask them to add a review to a third-party website and share it
2. If unhappy, ask how we can help make it better
LOCALINTENT ENGINE
44
45. Invest in a local tool to get analytics from and use features like alerts if someone tries to do
“negative local SEO”
Organize your site’s taxonomy not just by city, but also by neighborhood (makes sense for locations
with multiple locations in a major city in my opinion)
Create your own review funnel to prevent getting negative reviews and boost positive reviews
TAKEAWAYS
45
47. Fred is a joke, not actionable, happens multiple times a day
Google looks at social mentions and sentiment
"I click on a lot of ads mostly because they are more relevant than organic search results. This is
shameful but stuff we couldn't discover.”
Technical SEO
• 302 / 301 - should pass the same still
• "I would do whatever"
Title tags
• Won’t be able to opt out of Google rewriting title tags
Don’t use noindex tags
Lowering your own traffic, don’t like idea of doing it, much rather improve pages, if not
showing up, not indexed, not effecting site (Corner cases: hacked sites)
Don't remove old content or comments unless spammy/low quality
Does usability impact rankings?
• “Why do you hate me?”
FS changes a lot, still under development
GARY ILLEYES Q&A– GRAIN OF SALT TIME
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48. Mobile First Index – small portion of sites are being tested now
If site passes test, there’s a chance they could move it to the MFI, then monitor the traffic to
make sure not losing, if you have m dot and traffic declines, yell at John Mu
Take links from desktop for now until figure out for mobile
Hreflang plus canonical - update canonical for mobile? John created diagram for hreflang
mobile and Google is still figuring it ourselves
Penguin - very good at discounting links but should we still do the disavow?
"Do whatever makes you feel better“
Personally doesn’t disavow anything
When nofollow everything because of manual action penalty for linking from sponsored posts
Nofollow dangerous for int links - thinks it's bat shit stupid
GARY ILLEYES Q&A– GRAIN OF SALT TIME
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50. Technical debt makes crawling, indexing, query
clustering, and semantic understanding more
complex for search engines
Can be done by accident, intentionally, or
intentionally with awareness (we will fix it
later)
Debt is inevitable for project success and
70% of all projects fail
Project success is when you produce
the planned deliverables within budget
and on time (including approved
changes)
40% of SEOs wait more than a year to get critical
dev tasks done
Top issues are legacy technology limitations,
marketers saying “we’ll SEO it later”, and
organizations running fragile instead of agile
Unpaid SEO technical debt leads to SEO
bankruptcy
Google won’t wait very long for you to
deal and fix your technical debt
REDUCING THE BURDEN OF TECHNICALDEBT IN SEO
50
51. Search engines never forget and we are finding that they have a lot of storage
Incremental crawling never ends = the web gets bigger and bigger
When there is consistency in signals, search engines use prediction based priority scheduling
Helps maximize the index freshness
REDUCING THE BURDEN OF TECHNICALDEBT IN SEO
51
52. Generational software cruft
Spaghetti code or code that’s wanted, badly designed, and unnecessary complicated
Legacy code bases and deprecation (ex. – AJAX and Flash)
Content cruft
Poor quality content signals build up over time as incremental crawling continues to gather
signals
“Googlebot gets where water couldn’t”
Ex. – Google indexes staging and test sites somehow
Architectural and semantic cruft
Taxonomy changes can compound into semantic loss as weaken topical authority signals
“Concept drift” is the blurring of concept relatedness and topical dilution and can trigger AI
URL cruft – no URLs are ever gone, only the resource there is gone
Ex. – Filename extensions and junk directories like /public/
410 HTTP status codes are still recrawled just in case something changes
Crawl cruft
Crawl frequency is based on URL historical change and importance rate
URLs are added to the “queue”
Push indexing is when Google indexes a URL through fetch and submit or XML
sitemap submissions
Pull indexing is where Google indexes a URL through natural crawling and discovery
TYPES OF “CRUFT” THAT CREATE TECHNICALDEBT
52
56. GSC analysis
Add everything to GSC from the
past and present and review the
reports for patterns
Ex. – internal link report for
“relatedness” and URL importance
Server/IP block analysis
Review IP neighbors or sites on
the same server as you and ask
questions
Server log file analysis
Review all protocols and sites but
filter out bot emulators
Plan to repay the debt using the
MoSCoW Approach and Refactoring
(restructure existing code, altering
internal structure without changing its
external behavior or a small series of
behaviors that preserve
transformations)
ACKNOWLEDGE, CALCULATE, PRIORITIZE, REPAY DEBT
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59. GSC URL Parameters Tool is a directive for Google so use it with caution
Helps guide Google with crawl rules and hint building
Revisit all past .htaccess files
Look to rewrite and reorder rules for efficiency with regex or cut out old rules still firing
Fix redirect chains
Remove redundant files like JS and CSS
Avoid relative URLs vs. absolute URLs particularly in WP
Review canonical link relation in all forms
Ex. – redirects, canonicals, hreflang, HTTPS are all forms of canonicalization but rel next/prev is
NOT
Rebuild strong semantics and relatedness
Rather than removing content, improve it (upcycling URLs)
Use co-occurring terms to develop strong semantic clues and conceptual structures
Find what correlates in Google’s eyes using https://www.google.com/trends/correlate
Create topical hubs for focused crawled
DIVERTTHE DEBT
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60. Build well categorized and conceptually structured sitemaps
XML sitemaps pass URL importance signals
Always check them periodically even if they autogenerate
Create externally hosted XML sitemaps to take back control and jump the dev queue
Forget about setting priority and last modified tags
Exclude lower quality sections of the site
Optimize and deoptimize internal links to increase and decrease URL importance
Accept that some SEO technical debt is necessary for agility but do your best to avoid it in the first place
and chip away at it over time
DIVERTTHE DEBT
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62. C suite thinks in PowerPoint slides, not Excel
Developers don’t want to waste time so they need separate doc like excel
UX, IA, and taxonomy of websites applies to audits
Don’t flip back and forth from topics, each should flow each other logically to tell the story
Your client doesn’t think about you when you're not around -- it's just the way it is
Help your stakeholders - if they cant make the case when you're not around you can’t get it
done
Create standalone doc for each topic
What it is, why important, what needs to be done, priority level, who needs to do it
Show don’t tell
Use screenshots and examples to illustrate your point
Supplemental materials
Include a checklist with step by step input toons and link back to audit
Prioritization - cant be replaced by a tool
May cost too much
Site may replatform in a year
May not be worth it (long URLs)
SEOAUDITS YOUR CLIENT CAN UNDERSTAND
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63. 1. Budget
• Fix sales process for people who can afford your services
2. Busy-ness
• Nagging is customer service, especially agency,
• Explicitly state I need this from you this week
3. Bad relationships
• Internal politics, especially internal
• Know your audience
4. Brain overload
• Break it down make tasks bite-sized
• Ex - page load time = big where compress images = small
SEOAUDITYOUR CLIENT CAN UNDERSTAND
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64. Audits are expensive, charge accordingly because they will always take more time than you think
Do better work
Get a reputation
Beat the tool
What is easy, but why how and when are harder
Q: Split content and technical audits?
A: Yes, to split content vs technical if that makes it easier to get it done and in JIRA, been successful
with that approach before
TAKEAWAYS
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66. Research extensively
Existing competitive answer box results
People also asked, click on them
Searches related to at bottom of SERP
Think like student for educational content
Readability is 3rd to 8th grade writing on average
Do I trust this content? Meet needs? What info do I need to have confidence in this topic?
Answer the public.com for topical research tool
Add rich media, graphs, charts, photos to enhance and be more complete
Don't need markup but still use because constantly being refined since G keeps making mistakes
Doesn’t advocate for JSON-LD, prefer schema or microdata or RFID
Bing doesn’t understand
Code directly in HTML instead of in script, but cant have conflicting signals if do script and
HTML code
FEATURED SNIPPETS
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67. Deeper answers get more FS
Dangerous to nest schemes inside each other, sometimes confused, need to test, not
perfect process
Strong topical organization reinforces topical strength
invasion also silo access
URL hierarchical silo model
Section level sidebar interlinking
Autocomplete
Choose schema carefully
Manual action penalty for recipe schema for non food recipe (soap) need to use HowTo instead
which is new as of 6 months ago
Smaller sites can win with more complete answers, stronger architecture and organization
Ex - goodtherapy.org
Toptenreviews.com own a lot of FS
FEATURED SNIPPETS
67
In November 2015, John Mueller said he expected Googlebot to crawl websites by sending HTTP/2 requests starting in early 2016. We don’t know why, as of October 2017, that hasn't happened yet.
What we do know is that Googlebot doesn't support HTTP/2. It still crawls by sending HTTP/ 1.1 requests. Both this experiment and the “Rendering on Google Search” page confirm it. (If you’d like to know more about the technology behind Googlebot, then you should check out what they recently shared.)
For now, it seems we have to accept the status quo. We recommended that Robert (and you readers as well) enable HTTP/2 on your websites for better performance, but continue optimizing for HTTP/ 1.1. Your visitors will notice and thank you.
JavaScript Indexing and SEO: The Naked Truth
This was a fairly technical session, but eventually understood the importance of it. Bart Goralewicz of Elephate went through a very thorough presentation on how JavaScript can impact SEO. Particularly, he mentioned how Google and JavaScript don't really get along as well as regular HTML5. I learned that not all JavaScript is created equal, not all JavsScript frameworks are crawled of indexed the same, and inline vs. external JS makes a huge difference.
Google isn't the only search engine that has difficulty crawling JavaScript-heavy sites, Bing and Yahoo are probably the worst ones. See slide #74. Overall, this was a great talk and should be something developers, and marketers should discuss when dealing with SEO and the more technical aspects when building a website. You can view the slide below.