BrightonSEO Conference: Yext Discussion on Voice Search and SchemaChristian Ward
How to Speak Search Engine.
Ever listen to a child ask questions of Siri? Have you watched them say, “Ok, Google…” and proceed to ask what seems to be an awkward string of words? Believe it or not, children tend to speak “Search Engine” better than we do. Children have defined “structured” language choices with simple terms that haven’t been corrupted by years of nuanced definitions, metaphors, and colloquialisms. These clear, singular definitions are exactly what Google wants from you too, and we’ll talk about how to accomplish that.
BrightonSEO Summer 2021 - The Underrated Value of Internal LinksNatalie Arney
Internal linking can be the most impactful way SEOs can make a difference to a site, but it can also give you a massive amount of frustration if it’s not handled properly.
I explore what internal links are, the issues you can encounter with them, how to find internal linking opportunities and how to prove the worth of improving internal linking to clients and other stakeholders
Best practice is not enough #brightonSEO @Linkdex #SEOnow stageBranded3
Think back to the last time you applied for a job. It doesn’t matter if you work in-house or agency side – it’s likely that there was a line in your job spec that read “a good understanding of best practice”.
But when you turned up on your first day at work, knowing the best thing to do in every situation that might arise I doubt you were surprised to find out that the best thing to do couldn’t be done.
The website wasn’t built that way.
The client won’t sign that off.
That’ll never get past legal.
So you need to come up with the second best thing to do. That’s not part of best practice. Opinions come to a head and nothing gets done because businesses are mistaken in their opinion that doing nothing is fine if the best thing can’t be done.
But best practice is a misnomer anyway.
When we say best practice what we really mean is standard practice.
If all you ever implement is standard practice that’s all you’ll be. Standard.
If you can’t even reach standard your business deserves to fail.
Where does best practice even come from though? People treat it as if it’s some kind of bible handed down from the gatekeepers – the guys who can shut off your revenue.
Best practice is actually more like Wikipedia than a bible. It’s populated by everyone who works in the industry and most of it is factually incorrect. You should get 0 points for referencing it. The only things in there that actually do come from the channel owners are loaded with bias. Contributions from experts are self-serving and so many pat each other and themselves on the back that received wisdom becomes perceived fact.
But if neither are reliable – and if what everyone is doing is the same thing – isn’t there a chance that doing something, anything different could drive better results than best practice?
I would always overrule an expert if the data says otherwise.
If we know our customers want X and the channel owners want Y, we should spend our time getting X to work with Y and not the other way around.
Staff are fearful that deliberately setting out to do something that isn’t best practice will result in an automatic dismissal. I’m not saying it won’t.
As a result, people will wait months or years for best practice to be implemented because it’s safe. The channel owners told us to do it. The experts concurred. Businesses spend a lot of money and a lot of time being average because nobody gets sacked for being average. After all – it’s in the job description.
Using causal Inference to better understand the search intent Dateme Tubotamuno
Causal inference helps us understand the question of why. In this talk, I will demonstrate the power of causality in understanding user intent during keyword research and performance analysis. The user intent is beyond transactional, informational, and navigational classifications
BrightonSEO Conference: Yext Discussion on Voice Search and SchemaChristian Ward
How to Speak Search Engine.
Ever listen to a child ask questions of Siri? Have you watched them say, “Ok, Google…” and proceed to ask what seems to be an awkward string of words? Believe it or not, children tend to speak “Search Engine” better than we do. Children have defined “structured” language choices with simple terms that haven’t been corrupted by years of nuanced definitions, metaphors, and colloquialisms. These clear, singular definitions are exactly what Google wants from you too, and we’ll talk about how to accomplish that.
BrightonSEO Summer 2021 - The Underrated Value of Internal LinksNatalie Arney
Internal linking can be the most impactful way SEOs can make a difference to a site, but it can also give you a massive amount of frustration if it’s not handled properly.
I explore what internal links are, the issues you can encounter with them, how to find internal linking opportunities and how to prove the worth of improving internal linking to clients and other stakeholders
Best practice is not enough #brightonSEO @Linkdex #SEOnow stageBranded3
Think back to the last time you applied for a job. It doesn’t matter if you work in-house or agency side – it’s likely that there was a line in your job spec that read “a good understanding of best practice”.
But when you turned up on your first day at work, knowing the best thing to do in every situation that might arise I doubt you were surprised to find out that the best thing to do couldn’t be done.
The website wasn’t built that way.
The client won’t sign that off.
That’ll never get past legal.
So you need to come up with the second best thing to do. That’s not part of best practice. Opinions come to a head and nothing gets done because businesses are mistaken in their opinion that doing nothing is fine if the best thing can’t be done.
But best practice is a misnomer anyway.
When we say best practice what we really mean is standard practice.
If all you ever implement is standard practice that’s all you’ll be. Standard.
If you can’t even reach standard your business deserves to fail.
Where does best practice even come from though? People treat it as if it’s some kind of bible handed down from the gatekeepers – the guys who can shut off your revenue.
Best practice is actually more like Wikipedia than a bible. It’s populated by everyone who works in the industry and most of it is factually incorrect. You should get 0 points for referencing it. The only things in there that actually do come from the channel owners are loaded with bias. Contributions from experts are self-serving and so many pat each other and themselves on the back that received wisdom becomes perceived fact.
But if neither are reliable – and if what everyone is doing is the same thing – isn’t there a chance that doing something, anything different could drive better results than best practice?
I would always overrule an expert if the data says otherwise.
If we know our customers want X and the channel owners want Y, we should spend our time getting X to work with Y and not the other way around.
Staff are fearful that deliberately setting out to do something that isn’t best practice will result in an automatic dismissal. I’m not saying it won’t.
As a result, people will wait months or years for best practice to be implemented because it’s safe. The channel owners told us to do it. The experts concurred. Businesses spend a lot of money and a lot of time being average because nobody gets sacked for being average. After all – it’s in the job description.
Using causal Inference to better understand the search intent Dateme Tubotamuno
Causal inference helps us understand the question of why. In this talk, I will demonstrate the power of causality in understanding user intent during keyword research and performance analysis. The user intent is beyond transactional, informational, and navigational classifications
Traffic vs conversions how seo & cro can work togetherChloe Fair
SEOs are focused on driving traffic to a website (to increase sales) and CROs are focused on driving conversions on a website (to increase sales) – the end goal is the same. Diving into the conversion funnel, this talk will show you how CRO and SEO techniques can be combined to drive relevant, converting traffic to landing pages, targeting a broad range of queries from high to low intent.
Meaningful SEO Reporting Insights Without Google AnalyticsNicole Bullock
Google Analytics is often utilized to provide metrics and insights on website performance to clients. But what happens when you have an enterprise client that limits access to site metrics, yet still requires comprehensive reporting insights? In this presentation, I discuss the best elements of site reporting available in Google Search Console, as well as some ways I have collaborated, tinkered, and combined 3rd-party resources to make a deck to impress clients.
BrightonSEO 5 Critical Questions Your Log Files Can Answer September 2016Mark Thomas
Combining Web Crawler Data with Server Logs to highlight Crawl Budget opportunities. Get Google crawling and indexing more of your pages in Organic Search Results!
Efficient AF: Automating SEO Reporting With Google Data Studio - Sam Marsden,...DeepCrawl
How much time do you waste pulling reports and stats from individual tools and platforms? If the answer is too much then you need to get automating your SEO reporting to get yourself out of manual and inefficient workflows that waste your precious time. Everybody’s heard of Google Data Studio now, but are you using to join up and automate reporting as much as you could? Sam will show you how so you can set up Google Data Studio dashboards so you can become a more efficient marketer.
Brand Mentions vs Links: Making PR Coverage Work Harder for SEO.James Brockbank
In this session from BrightonSEO, James shares insights into how to make your PR coverage work harder for SEO by avoiding brand mentions and maximising links.
Get SEO Buy-In By Using the Language of the “C”Tracy McDonald
How to build a full Organic market model using your industry's data
Predict future Organic traffic based on your previous SEO performance
Use C-level terminology to build a revenue model that will win you pitches for more SEO resources
SEO ROI Calculator Template Link: http://bit.ly/BrightonSEOROICalculator
The Day After Tomorrow: When Ad Blockers Stop All Analytics PlatformsSamuel Scott
Samuel Scott's October 2017 presentation at Distilled's SearchLove London conference. He discusses online ads, ad blocking, GDPR, and the future of Big Data.
Level Up Your Analytics at SearchLove London 2017Mike Arnesen
Behold! The slide deck from my GTM talk at SearchLove London 2017.
Quick description: Let's face it - being able to track and analyze your top pages, bounce rates, form submissions, and the like is pretty low-level stuff. It's almost 2018, so it's time to increase your Google Tag Manager proficiency to get the most of your Analytics configuration. In this session, Mike will geek out on GTM, show you how to track progress through forms and pinpoint friction points, explain how to set up user interactions to fire virtual page views for more granular intelligence, fix cross and subdomain tracking issues, and more.
News SEO: Why we’ve de commissioned AMP - Brighton SEO September 2021Daniel Smullen
AMP is no longer a requirement of the top stories carousel on Google. And with the introduction of page experience as a ranking factor, this talk intends to provide insights into behind the scenes of a major news publisher de-commissioning AMP. Revealing what happens to top stories performance as well as the pros and cons of the AMP framework for publishers as well as it’s future in a new page experience world in News SEO.
SearchLove London 2017 | Will Critchlow | Seeing the Future: How to Tell the ...Distilled
It is often hard and expensive to make major changes to your website and many businesses demand forecasts, predictions, and business cases to prioritise them. Will is going to present tools and approaches for figuring out whether a change is worthwhile before you make it - including ways of thinking about on-page, content quality, usage data impacts, and what happens when you change your internal linking structure.
SEO - Moving the dial #BrightonSEO - September 2016Berian Reed
Tips and tricks on how to get great SEO results that move the dial in 2016. The very latest strategies for link building, creating quality content and beating your competitors.
The Quickest Win in SEO – How to do Internal Linking the Right WayMartin Hayman
This was a talk from BrightonSEO September 2021 and covers not only the importance of internal linking but also how to do it. It also covers a number of examples and additional tips.
You've seen enough talks to know the importance of internal links. But what next? How exactly do you go about improving your internal linking. This presentation looks at the issues, the opportunities and the actionable steps to take.
This was a talk I gave to the group at SEOyvr in Vancouver on February 2016. My talk was about how evergreen content can create an SEO fly wheel. I walked through several different examples, and described these strategies can benefit any SEO.
SearchLove London 2017 | Jon Myers | Mobile-First Preparedness: What We've Le...Distilled
Everyone's been talking about mobile-first all year long, but with 2018 looming, are you prepared for it? By now you’ve probably heard of the Majestic Million report and we thought we'd have a little fun and crawl it! Jon will show how many of the world’s largest sites are shaping up for Google's mobile-first Index. His talk will give an analytical overview of all key mobile aspects, such as site configuration, AMP, fetch time, mobile navigation, crawl depth, content differences, and mobile/desktop differences. Google offers best practice, but we will show you the data on how well the top sites are adjusting to mobile-first indexation.
Julio Taylor and Ben Wood - SEO and UX teams, unite!Hallam
Quality UX will be required to succeed as we move rapidly into an era of search engine ranking technology that is becoming more opaque, dominated by machine learning, and better than ever at interpreting consumer behavior. If SEO teams can’t influence (or be a central part of) brands’ UX approach, then a key performance lever will be outside of their control. In what should be an entertaining talk, Julio and Ben will provide practical steps for collaboration between SEO and design teams, and how to combine UX and SEO strategies to promote better rankings, and produce better converting pages.
SEO is Evolving Faster Than Ever - survive and take advantage of all the rece...Paul Thompson
It sure feels like keeping up with SEO for your WordPress site has been a wild ride this year. Struggling to decide which things to pay attention to and tackle next?
Let’s get clear on the implications of the important changes in SEO over the past year… And build some plans for how to benefit from them!
WordCamp Ottawa presentation
Traffic vs conversions how seo & cro can work togetherChloe Fair
SEOs are focused on driving traffic to a website (to increase sales) and CROs are focused on driving conversions on a website (to increase sales) – the end goal is the same. Diving into the conversion funnel, this talk will show you how CRO and SEO techniques can be combined to drive relevant, converting traffic to landing pages, targeting a broad range of queries from high to low intent.
Meaningful SEO Reporting Insights Without Google AnalyticsNicole Bullock
Google Analytics is often utilized to provide metrics and insights on website performance to clients. But what happens when you have an enterprise client that limits access to site metrics, yet still requires comprehensive reporting insights? In this presentation, I discuss the best elements of site reporting available in Google Search Console, as well as some ways I have collaborated, tinkered, and combined 3rd-party resources to make a deck to impress clients.
BrightonSEO 5 Critical Questions Your Log Files Can Answer September 2016Mark Thomas
Combining Web Crawler Data with Server Logs to highlight Crawl Budget opportunities. Get Google crawling and indexing more of your pages in Organic Search Results!
Efficient AF: Automating SEO Reporting With Google Data Studio - Sam Marsden,...DeepCrawl
How much time do you waste pulling reports and stats from individual tools and platforms? If the answer is too much then you need to get automating your SEO reporting to get yourself out of manual and inefficient workflows that waste your precious time. Everybody’s heard of Google Data Studio now, but are you using to join up and automate reporting as much as you could? Sam will show you how so you can set up Google Data Studio dashboards so you can become a more efficient marketer.
Brand Mentions vs Links: Making PR Coverage Work Harder for SEO.James Brockbank
In this session from BrightonSEO, James shares insights into how to make your PR coverage work harder for SEO by avoiding brand mentions and maximising links.
Get SEO Buy-In By Using the Language of the “C”Tracy McDonald
How to build a full Organic market model using your industry's data
Predict future Organic traffic based on your previous SEO performance
Use C-level terminology to build a revenue model that will win you pitches for more SEO resources
SEO ROI Calculator Template Link: http://bit.ly/BrightonSEOROICalculator
The Day After Tomorrow: When Ad Blockers Stop All Analytics PlatformsSamuel Scott
Samuel Scott's October 2017 presentation at Distilled's SearchLove London conference. He discusses online ads, ad blocking, GDPR, and the future of Big Data.
Level Up Your Analytics at SearchLove London 2017Mike Arnesen
Behold! The slide deck from my GTM talk at SearchLove London 2017.
Quick description: Let's face it - being able to track and analyze your top pages, bounce rates, form submissions, and the like is pretty low-level stuff. It's almost 2018, so it's time to increase your Google Tag Manager proficiency to get the most of your Analytics configuration. In this session, Mike will geek out on GTM, show you how to track progress through forms and pinpoint friction points, explain how to set up user interactions to fire virtual page views for more granular intelligence, fix cross and subdomain tracking issues, and more.
News SEO: Why we’ve de commissioned AMP - Brighton SEO September 2021Daniel Smullen
AMP is no longer a requirement of the top stories carousel on Google. And with the introduction of page experience as a ranking factor, this talk intends to provide insights into behind the scenes of a major news publisher de-commissioning AMP. Revealing what happens to top stories performance as well as the pros and cons of the AMP framework for publishers as well as it’s future in a new page experience world in News SEO.
SearchLove London 2017 | Will Critchlow | Seeing the Future: How to Tell the ...Distilled
It is often hard and expensive to make major changes to your website and many businesses demand forecasts, predictions, and business cases to prioritise them. Will is going to present tools and approaches for figuring out whether a change is worthwhile before you make it - including ways of thinking about on-page, content quality, usage data impacts, and what happens when you change your internal linking structure.
SEO - Moving the dial #BrightonSEO - September 2016Berian Reed
Tips and tricks on how to get great SEO results that move the dial in 2016. The very latest strategies for link building, creating quality content and beating your competitors.
The Quickest Win in SEO – How to do Internal Linking the Right WayMartin Hayman
This was a talk from BrightonSEO September 2021 and covers not only the importance of internal linking but also how to do it. It also covers a number of examples and additional tips.
You've seen enough talks to know the importance of internal links. But what next? How exactly do you go about improving your internal linking. This presentation looks at the issues, the opportunities and the actionable steps to take.
This was a talk I gave to the group at SEOyvr in Vancouver on February 2016. My talk was about how evergreen content can create an SEO fly wheel. I walked through several different examples, and described these strategies can benefit any SEO.
SearchLove London 2017 | Jon Myers | Mobile-First Preparedness: What We've Le...Distilled
Everyone's been talking about mobile-first all year long, but with 2018 looming, are you prepared for it? By now you’ve probably heard of the Majestic Million report and we thought we'd have a little fun and crawl it! Jon will show how many of the world’s largest sites are shaping up for Google's mobile-first Index. His talk will give an analytical overview of all key mobile aspects, such as site configuration, AMP, fetch time, mobile navigation, crawl depth, content differences, and mobile/desktop differences. Google offers best practice, but we will show you the data on how well the top sites are adjusting to mobile-first indexation.
Julio Taylor and Ben Wood - SEO and UX teams, unite!Hallam
Quality UX will be required to succeed as we move rapidly into an era of search engine ranking technology that is becoming more opaque, dominated by machine learning, and better than ever at interpreting consumer behavior. If SEO teams can’t influence (or be a central part of) brands’ UX approach, then a key performance lever will be outside of their control. In what should be an entertaining talk, Julio and Ben will provide practical steps for collaboration between SEO and design teams, and how to combine UX and SEO strategies to promote better rankings, and produce better converting pages.
SEO is Evolving Faster Than Ever - survive and take advantage of all the rece...Paul Thompson
It sure feels like keeping up with SEO for your WordPress site has been a wild ride this year. Struggling to decide which things to pay attention to and tackle next?
Let’s get clear on the implications of the important changes in SEO over the past year… And build some plans for how to benefit from them!
WordCamp Ottawa presentation
Survive and Take Advantage of SEO Changes in 2019 - WordCamp HamiltonPaul Thompson
Does it feel like keeping up with SEO for your WordPress site has been a wild ride this year? Struggling to decide which things to pay attention to and tackle next?
Let’s get clear on the implications of the important changes in SEO over the past year… And build some plans for
how to benefit from them!
SEO is an evolving science. While some of the core principles will presumably stick around forever, some of the more nuanced parts of it are subject to continuous change. As a result, many of the "proven" tactics people have used in the past -- keyword stuffing, link schemes, and so on -- are now the stuff of legends.
Unless your organization benefits from having a dedicated SEO person who can work on this stuff day-in and day-out, keeping up with the latest changes in the world of SEO can be a struggle. But in the end, adjusting your strategy based on search ranking algorithm updates or changes in the way search results are displayed visually can be incredibly impactful on business results.
In new guide, 18 SEO Myths to Leave Behind in 2017, we reiterate some of the best practices that should continue to guide your strategy through 2017, while also highlighting how SEO has changed over the course of 2016.
Structure Matters - Information Architecture for SEO and UXAscedia
Information architecture is increasingly important in all aspects of business. Search engines and users are placing the burden of information organization and structure on website owners and rewarding or penalizing brands according to their accessibility. From domain structure to sitemap hierarchy to page layout, content architecture can directly affect lead generation, website engagement and conversion rates. Not understanding best practices or performing diligent testing can quickly impede search engine rankings and user experience. Learn the necessary steps required to properly architect your website's content and data.
Structure Matters - Information Architecture for UX & ConversionsJackie Burhans
Presented at World Information Architecture Day, my presentation explores how the power of driving information has shifted from content creators to content consumers and how your message can reach your audience in a constantly changing digital landscape.
Featuring insights from The Wizard of Moz himself, Rand Fishkin reminded us during his popular SEO presentation at Content Marketing World 2015, search engines are constantly evolving their algorithms to enhance their ability to serve consumers’ needs. And while current systems are highly pro cient at classifying the terms of a search query, calculating its likely intent, and ranking potential results in terms of their relevance, the search engine of tomorrow will likely use more advanced methods of mapping (and manipulating) the mechanics of meaning.
What does all this mean for marketers? And, more importantly, what should you be doing now to prepare your content for the rise of sentient SEO? Read on!
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.
Google's evolution into deep learning has created a whole new kind of algorithm; one that differs substantially from the type of ranking system SEOs & marketers have become used to over the past 17 years. In this presentation, Rand explores the changes Google's made, and how it impacts the actions necessary to be successful in 2016 and beyond.
How Google is Reading and Indexing Content in 2016Greenlane
This is the presentation given by Bill Sebald at the Digital Marketing Suburbia Meetup #1 - https://www.meetup.com/Digital-Marketing-Suburbia/
This presentation focuses on Google's ability to read and understand website content and the intent of queries.
Introduction to Microsoft Search #SRC101 #365EduCon 20211214Kanwal Khipple
Microsoft Search is looking to bring the search experiences across all Microsoft 365 services together into a single unified experience.
Attend this session to learn how the experience impacts your users, how you can configure it as well as scenarios where you should customize it.
Similar to Human -> Machine -> Human: Ruth Burr Reedy MozCon 2019 (20)
The Agency Model is Broken - UnGagged LA 2019Ruth Burr Reedy
The digital marketing agency model is broken. In this talk, I share the most important metric to keep your agency healthy and functional: employee retention
Track Everything with Google Tag Manager - #DFWSEM May 2017Ruth Burr Reedy
Google Tag Manager can do so much more than just fire your conversion tracking pixels. Learn how you can use GTM's out-of-the-box functionality, plus custom HTML and jQuery scripts, to track everything your heart desires - and even go beyond tracking to do things like personalize and canonicalize your site!
Great SEO Starts with Your Brand [State of Search 2015]Ruth Burr Reedy
Great SEO involves making connections with users, targeting engagement and providing whole-funnel UX. These are all things that great brands do well - even those who don't do traditonal SEO well. By defining your brand up front, you can inform a holistic marketing strategy that delights and retains customers and shows Google you know what's up.
You live for SEO - but SEO job descriptions always seem to rule you out! Learn how to create concrete, real-world evidence that you know your stuff and can get the job done.
In this talk, from MozCon 2015, we'll cover how to tell what job descriptions are really after, how to own your personal brand in search engines, and how to network for relationships that will turn into job opportunities.
Traditional Marketers Are Coming for Our Jobs - #StateofSearch 2014Ruth Burr Reedy
Traditional marketers are making big plays into the digital marketing space. In this increasingly competitive market, how can digital marketers compete with traditional marketing and big media?
In my talk at DFWSEM State of Search 2014, I discussed the coming tide of traditional marketers trying to do digital marketing, the threats to be aware of, and strategies to compete.
As online marketers, we start reaching our users way, way before they actually reach our site. So why are we so focused on on-page when it comes to analytics? My presentation from the 2013 DFWSEM State of Search conference discusses how to measure marketing analytics and sell it internally.
Ruth Burr's slides from the SEO Strategies panel at DFWSEM State of Search 2012. What does your grandma think you do? It's called "marketing." The more we incorporate classic marketing metrics and thinking into our SEO the more we'll be doing real business and making real money.
APNIC Foundation, presented by Ellisha Heppner at the PNG DNS Forum 2024APNIC
Ellisha Heppner, Grant Management Lead, presented an update on APNIC Foundation to the PNG DNS Forum held from 6 to 10 May, 2024 in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
Multi-cluster Kubernetes Networking- Patterns, Projects and GuidelinesSanjeev Rampal
Talk presented at Kubernetes Community Day, New York, May 2024.
Technical summary of Multi-Cluster Kubernetes Networking architectures with focus on 4 key topics.
1) Key patterns for Multi-cluster architectures
2) Architectural comparison of several OSS/ CNCF projects to address these patterns
3) Evolution trends for the APIs of these projects
4) Some design recommendations & guidelines for adopting/ deploying these solutions.
1.Wireless Communication System_Wireless communication is a broad term that i...JeyaPerumal1
Wireless communication involves the transmission of information over a distance without the help of wires, cables or any other forms of electrical conductors.
Wireless communication is a broad term that incorporates all procedures and forms of connecting and communicating between two or more devices using a wireless signal through wireless communication technologies and devices.
Features of Wireless Communication
The evolution of wireless technology has brought many advancements with its effective features.
The transmitted distance can be anywhere between a few meters (for example, a television's remote control) and thousands of kilometers (for example, radio communication).
Wireless communication can be used for cellular telephony, wireless access to the internet, wireless home networking, and so on.
This 7-second Brain Wave Ritual Attracts Money To You.!nirahealhty
Discover the power of a simple 7-second brain wave ritual that can attract wealth and abundance into your life. By tapping into specific brain frequencies, this technique helps you manifest financial success effortlessly. Ready to transform your financial future? Try this powerful ritual and start attracting money today!
Bridging the Digital Gap Brad Spiegel Macon, GA Initiative.pptxBrad Spiegel Macon GA
Brad Spiegel Macon GA’s journey exemplifies the profound impact that one individual can have on their community. Through his unwavering dedication to digital inclusion, he’s not only bridging the gap in Macon but also setting an example for others to follow.
# Internet Security: Safeguarding Your Digital World
In the contemporary digital age, the internet is a cornerstone of our daily lives. It connects us to vast amounts of information, provides platforms for communication, enables commerce, and offers endless entertainment. However, with these conveniences come significant security challenges. Internet security is essential to protect our digital identities, sensitive data, and overall online experience. This comprehensive guide explores the multifaceted world of internet security, providing insights into its importance, common threats, and effective strategies to safeguard your digital world.
## Understanding Internet Security
Internet security encompasses the measures and protocols used to protect information, devices, and networks from unauthorized access, attacks, and damage. It involves a wide range of practices designed to safeguard data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Effective internet security is crucial for individuals, businesses, and governments alike, as cyber threats continue to evolve in complexity and scale.
### Key Components of Internet Security
1. **Confidentiality**: Ensuring that information is accessible only to those authorized to access it.
2. **Integrity**: Protecting information from being altered or tampered with by unauthorized parties.
3. **Availability**: Ensuring that authorized users have reliable access to information and resources when needed.
## Common Internet Security Threats
Cyber threats are numerous and constantly evolving. Understanding these threats is the first step in protecting against them. Some of the most common internet security threats include:
### Malware
Malware, or malicious software, is designed to harm, exploit, or otherwise compromise a device, network, or service. Common types of malware include:
- **Viruses**: Programs that attach themselves to legitimate software and replicate, spreading to other programs and files.
- **Worms**: Standalone malware that replicates itself to spread to other computers.
- **Trojan Horses**: Malicious software disguised as legitimate software.
- **Ransomware**: Malware that encrypts a user's files and demands a ransom for the decryption key.
- **Spyware**: Software that secretly monitors and collects user information.
### Phishing
Phishing is a social engineering attack that aims to steal sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details. Attackers often masquerade as trusted entities in email or other communication channels, tricking victims into providing their information.
### Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) Attacks
MitM attacks occur when an attacker intercepts and potentially alters communication between two parties without their knowledge. This can lead to the unauthorized acquisition of sensitive information.
### Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks
2. @ruthburr #MozConShould SEOs be “chasing the algorithm”? In other words, when Google updates one of its many, many algorithms, is it a good use of our time to
try to figure out what’s changed?
3. @ruthburr #MozConAnd, more recently (and arguably more heatedly): are Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines worth paying attention to? Or are they a bunch of smoke
and mirrors on Google’s part?
4. @ruthburr #MozConI don’t find this conversation very interesting TBH! But I get it – SEOs are busy, and it’s really frustrating to see advice being put out there that
you know isn’t going to help people do SEO. It hurts to watch busy people waste their time. I think what both these conversations are missing is
where these activities might fit in to a larger framework or approach to SEO. How do we know where to spend our time?
5. Real Company Stuff
Wil Reynolds
@ruthburr #MozCon
https://www.slideshare.net/wilreynolds/do-real-company-stuff-mozcon-2012-version
People in the “that stuff is a waste of time” camp often point to Real Company Stuff – the idea that, as SEOs, we should be focusing more on
doing great marketing at a big-picture level and less on things like making tweaks to title tags and anchor text. I don’t disagree with any of that…
6. WHEN THE $50M AD CAMPAIGN
POINTS TO A MICROSITE
@ruthburr #MozCon…but it’s entirely possible to do these things in a way that does not create SEO success, which is a wasted opportunity. RCS is not an excuse not
to learn SEO fundamentals or technical SEO.
7. @ruthburr #MozConIf we focus solely on Google, we lose sight of our actual customer. But if we ignore Google to focus solely on the customer, we’re missing out
on opportunities to connect with that customer online. It’s both! It has to be both.
8. @ruthburr #MozCon
Icons made by Freepik from Flaticon
My personal framework for approaching changes in our industry is: we are humans, creating things for humans, with a machine serving as the
intermediary between the two.
9. @ruthburr #MozConHow do you “just create good content”? You figure out what information people need to complete their task and provide it. Where do you get
that information? User testing is useful, but expensive – and you don’t always have access to your clients’ users.
11. @ruthburr #MozCon
Source: Learning Semantic Textual Similarity from Conversations
They also have more data than anyone on how people talk about things (entities, topics, and the connections between them) using written
language.
12. @ruthburr #MozConParamount Pictures 1993
Google wants humans to find what they’re looking for when they search, which means Google spends a lot of time and money on helping their
machine try to understand what people are looking for when they search.
13. @ruthburr #MozConWhat do we mean when we say “Google”? Google is a COMPANY – humans making and communicating decisions about (among other things)
search
14. @ruthburr #MozCon
Source: Multi-stage query processing system and method for use with tokenspace repository
And Google is also the ALGORITHM – or, more accurately, a whole bunch of algorithms running consecutively and concurrently. At its very, very,
simplest, an algorithm takes inputs (information), processes them, and then returns some sort of output.
15. INPUTS OUTPUT
Link volume
Crawlability
Keyword use
Metadata
As SEOs, we tend to focus on optimizing algorithmic inputs – because that’s what we can control. For success, we tend to focus on the output,
i.e. the SERP. Hence the constant SEO chatter over whether or not something is a “ranking factor.”
16. @ruthburr #MozConBut Google is focused on results - do people find what they want? The SERP is only a means to that end. We should be looking at Google’s
outputs not as an end in and of themselves, but as information of how to achieve those results.
17. @ruthburr #MozCon
One way to understand Google is to leverage Google’s huge body of user data to understand the human-readable quality signals that Google (as
both a company and an algorithm) have deduced are important, and then to create that quality, while optimizing machine-readable equivalents
or proxies of those signals.
18. @ruthburr #MozCon
How can I demonstrate
quality in ways that are both
human-readable and
machine-readable?
27. “Fits your industry and business processes
Deploy a solution that delivers built-in best
practices specific to your industry, the most
flexible customer data model on the market
today, and a highly configurable, tightly
integrated platform, ensuring that solutions
will be fast to implement.”
@ruthburr #MozCon
Keyword: customer
relationship
management
Rank: 19
Understanding how well Google’s NLP AI can understand your content gives you insight into whether or not that content is sending strong
“good page on this topic” signals. This is great because humans are actually terrible at creating readable content that’s clearly about what they
think it’s about.
30. @ruthburr #MozCon
Google’s NLP API extracts entities and assigns them a “salience score” between 0 and 1 based on how relevant to the piece of content as a
whole they’ve determined each entity is. In the example above, you can see that the NLP API has successfully found “customer relationship
management” to be the entity of the page, but without much confidence. Probably part of why this page ranks on page 2.
31. On-Page SEO for NLP
Justin Briggs
@ruthburr #MozConhttps://www.briggsby.com/on-page-seo-for-nlp
34. @ruthburr #MozCon
> <
>
Icons made by Freepik from Flaticon
Link valuation is an example of a machine-readable equivalent of a human information-gathering experience. How would a human decide
whether or not someone was credible, using social signals? Lots of people saying it is better than just one person; if all those people are related,
we trust that less than if unrelated strangers all say the same thing; and an expert’s opinion carries more weight than some rando’s.
35. All Links are Not Created Equal
Cyrus Shepard
@ruthburr #MozConhttps://moz.com/blog/20-illustrations-on-search-
engines-valuation-of-links
38. @ruthburr #MozConWhat’s interesting with Lighthouse is that we can see Google trying to evolve its understanding of page load time to more closely mimic the way
a human would experience it - this is why metrics like time to interactive have become important alongside total page load time. The machine-
readable and human-readable signals are the same.
39. How to Run Lighthouse Reports
at Scale
James McNulty
@ruthburr #MozConhttps://www.upbuild.io/blog/lighthouse-reports-
multiple-pages/
40. Quality
Rater
Guidelines
For humans, by
humans
@ruthburr #MozConThe QR Guidelines were written by humans, for humans. They do not give insight into the algorithm(s), but they DO give insight into the quality
signals Google is intending to send, and are useful through that lens
41. @ruthburr #MozCon
Source: How to Build Your Own Search Ranking Algorithm with Machine Learning
Feedback from Quality Raters is likely used in two ways: to beta test changes in the algorithm and verify that returned results are relevant, and
to create a data set of High Quality, Needs Met pages that Google use as a training set for machine learning.
42. @ruthburr #MozCon
“[The guidelines] don’t tell you how the
algorithm is ranking results, but they…
show what the algorithm should do. ”
Ben Gomes
Google VP of Search Engineering
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/google-tests-
changes-to-its-search-algorithm-how-search-
works.html
43. @ruthburr #MozConThe big topic coming out of the QR Guidelines lately is E-A-T. SEOs are spending a lot of time arguing about whether or not E-A-T is useful or
important for SEO.
45. @ruthburr #MozCon
How expert
is this
content?
7!
E-A-T isn’t a ranking factor for the same reason “brand” isn’t a ranking factor – because things like “expertise” aren’t a single, quantifiable
quality that an entity does or doesn’t have. They’re made up of dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of discrete smaller signals.
47. @ruthburr #MozCon
You don’t know
what you’re
talking about!
I don’t care if E-A-T is a “ranking factor” or not because that’s not how that information is intended to be used. E-A-T is something humans at
Google have said to other humans. E-A-T and its attendent signals are human-readable ways of thinking about the question, “How do we tell if
someone knows what they’re talking about?”
48. @ruthburr #MozConMarie Haynes is going to talk more about optimizing specifically for E-A-T later in the conference, so I’m not going to go into it here, but what I’m
interested in when I read about E-A-T is:
50. @ruthburr #MozCon
“High E-A-T medical advice should be
written or produced by people or
organizations with appropriate medical
expertise or accreditation…”
I know how I would go about figuring out if someone had appropriate medical expertise – where might a machine look for that same
information online? This is an area in which actually shelling out for real experts to create your expert content pays off; the difference is clear in
the content itself but also in the expertise signals that you can build online.
51. @ruthburr #MozCon
“..[and] written or produced in a
professional style and should be
edited, reviewed, and updated on a
regular basis.”
These signals are easy, Google can find all of that on page. Great! We can optimize for that.
53. @ruthburr #MozCon
Which of these signals can
we boost? What can we make
easier for a machine to find
and read?
54. 2.6.4 How to Search for
Reputation Information
@ruthburr #MozConDid you know the QR Guidelines contain step-by-step instructions for conducting a link reputation audit? And all of these considerations are
things a machine can do as well. They might not go about it the same way a human would, but that’s fine, because I’m a human, and this is a
great way for me to look for ways to boost reputation signals.
56. @ruthburr #MozConPeople are constantly trying to “game the system” - the challenge for search engines is to create a sophisticated enough set of machine-
readable inputs that will separate the wheat from the chaff
57. @ruthburr #MozConThe easier a signal is to game, the less value it’s likely to pass on its own. It’s likely that certain signals like anchor text are only valuable in
context with other strong quality signals.
58. @ruthburr #MozConCarolco Pictures 1991So take another look through the QR guidelines and ask yourself: how would a machine look for these same signals?
61. @ruthburr #MozCon 61
@ruthburr #MozConCarolco Pictures 1991What does it mean to ”chase the algorithm”? If you chase it too much, it’s going to end up chasing you.
62. @ruthburr #MozCon
Keywords in title
tags are now
0.82% more
important!
Scrutiny of algorithm updates tends to over-focus on optimizing for inputs. If you do that, you’re focusing on the wrong information. But that
doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to be learned from algo updates.
63. @ruthburr #MozCon@ruthburr #MozConYou shouldn’t be solely reactive to algorithmic changes, but when they happen, it’s worth trying to understand what Google’s going for.
66. @ruthburr #MozCon
https://moz.com/blog/how-often-does-google-update-its-algorithm
First of all, Google updates multiple times per day. You may not even notice most of the changes – but if a change drastically impacts your site,
it doesn’t really matter if the rest of the index is affected. Information on updates is mostly useful at scale, and within your niche.
68. @ruthburr #MozCon
Page-Specific or Sitewide?
Is traffic impacted sitewide? If so, it’s likely that Google has devalued something you were benefitting from. If it’s specific pages, you’re
probably not being “penalized.”
70. @ruthburr #MozConSometimes it’s that the kind of page, or kind of information, that Google has determined users are looking for has changed.
71. @ruthburr #MozCon
“Sometimes what users expect evolves
and...the way that we try to determine
relevance, they evolve as well.”
GWC Hangout: June 14, 2019
John Mueller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0qLJRivdmY
72. @ruthburr #MozConUnderstanding not the what, but the why of a given algorithmic pattern or change can give you insight into how your target audiences are using
search to make decisions.
74. @ruthburr #MozCon
How can I provide these
things for my users in ways
that Google can see and
understand?
75. There’s a Better Way to Classify
Search Intent
Kane Jamison
@ruthburr #MozConhttps://www.contentharmony.com/blog/classifyin
g-search-intent/
76. How to Scrape Google SERPs to
Optimize for Search Intent
Rory Truesdale
@ruthburr #MozConhttps://www.searchenginejournal.com/scrape-
google-serp-custom-extractions/267211/
77. @ruthburr #MozConCarolco Pictures 1991
When an algorithm is focused on improving Google's results quality in a certain respect or fixing an existing flaw, it's almost certainly not the
last time they'll try to improve there. An algo update around content quality probably means they're going to continue iterating on that – look at
what happened with Panda.
79. @ruthburr #MozCon
Does Google look at [X thing]
as a ranking factor when
evaluating pages?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it. If it’s easy to game, they may have devalued
it or still be working on how to make it less gameable. Optimizing for human-readable quality and then making it machine-readable means you
can care less about “ranking factors” – worst case scenario, you’ve still improved things for humans.
80. @ruthburr #MozConOptimizing just for the algorithm is too reactive – optimizing just for humans is too inefficient. It has to be both.
...and whether paying attention to the QR Guidelines is worthwhile
I don’t find this conversation very interesting TBH! But I get it – SEOs are busy, and it’s really frustrating to see advice being put out there that you know isn’t going to help people do SEO. It hurts to watch busy people waste their time. I think what both these conversations are missing is where these activities might fit in to a larger framework or approach to SEO. How do we know where to spend our time?
People in the “ignore that” camp often focus on Real Company Shit
I don’t disagree with this at all - but it’s entirely possible to do these things in a way that does not create SEO success, which is a wasted opportunity. RCS is not an excuse not to learn SEO fundamentals or technical SEO.
It’s both! We can’t optimize for just humans or just Google. It has to be both.
My personal framework for approaching changes in our industry is: we are humans, creating things for humans, with a machine serving as the intermediary between the two.
How do you “just create good content”? You figure out what information people need to complete their task and provide it. Where do you get that information? User testing is useful, but expensive – and you don’t always have access to your clients’ users.
Google has more data than anyone on how people use search engines to find information
They also have more data than anyone on how people talk about things, i.e., entities and topics, using written language.
Google wants humans to find what they're looking for when they search, which means Google spends a lot of time trying to understand what people are looking for when they search.
There is Google the COMPANY: Humans making and communicating decisions about what’s important to the company
And there is Google the MACHINE: algorithms on top of algorithms
SEO tactics often come down to optimizing algorithmic inputs and tracking algorithmic outputs - hence the constant discussion over whether or not something is a “ranking factor.”
But Google is focused on results - do people find what they want? The SERP is only a means to that end. We should be looking at Google’s outputs not as an end in and of themselves, but as information of how to achieve those results.
One way to understand Google is to leverage Google’s huge body of user data to understand the human-readable quality signals that Google (as both a company and an algorithm) have deduced are important, and then to create that quality, while optimizing machine-readable equivalents or proxies of those signals.
The question then becomes: how can I demonstrate quality in a machine-readable way?
A human might ask, “What is this page about?”
How does a robot answer “What is this page about?” -> Keyword use; synonyms, stems, and close variants; topic modeling, TF-IDF (need to add a graphic of a robot here, looking at the factors, or otherwise convey the concept)
“Is this page a good example of a page about this thing?” (need to add a graphic of a human person here, having the thought, or otherwise convey the concept)
“Is this page a good example of a page about this thing?” (need to add a graphic of a robot here, looking at the factors, or otherwise convey the concept)
Natural language processing and neural matching
This is great because humans are terrible at creating content that’s about what they think it’s about!
Fortunately, optimizing for NLP has a lot in common with optimizing for readability.
Natural language processing
Natural language processing
“Can this site be trusted?” (need to add a graphic of a human person here, having the thought, or otherwise convey the concept)
“Can this site be trusted?” - Trust factors, HTTPS, author entity authority (need to add a graphic of a robot here, looking at the factors, or otherwise convey the concept)
Google’s evaluation of link signals is already very similar to how humans decide if information is credible
“Is this site easy to use?” (need to add a graphic of a human person here, having the thought, or otherwise convey the concept)
“Is this site easy to use?” - Page speed, crawlability, UX factors (need to add a graphic of a robot here, looking at the factors, or otherwise convey the concept)
What’s interesting here is that we can see Google trying to evolve its understanding of page load time to more closely mimic the way a human would experience it - this is why metrics like time to interactive have become important alongside total PLT
So now that we’ve reminded ourselves of what we’re trying to do, let’s revisit those two SEO battlegrounds we talked about earlier. The QR Guidelines: Do not give insight into algorithmic inputs - DO give insight into the quality signals Google is intending to send - useful through that lens
Used for two things: to TEST and to TRAIN
E-A-T
Expertise, authoritativeness, and trust are not quantifiable qualities that an entity either does or does not have (need to add graphics here of a human and a robot having this same conversation)
These are human-readable ways of thinking about the question “how do we tell if someone knows what they’re talking about?”
Marie is going to talk more about this later and you should listen to her
What, of those signals, is machine-readable?
How might a machine find the same information in another way?
What, of those signals, can we boost?
What, of those signals, is easiest to game/fake, and therefore likely to be weighted more lightly?
People are constantly trying to “game the system” - the challenge for search engines is to create a sophisticated enough set of machine-readable inputs that will separate the wheat from the chaff
The easier a signal is to game, the less value it’s going to pass on its own - it’s likely that certain signals around e.g. keyword relevance are only valuable in context with quality signals.
So take another look through the QR guidelines and ask –what would a machine do?
If you follow one person w/r/t QRGs make it Jen Slegg
What does it mean to “chase the algorithm”?
The end result should not be optimizing for inputs (keywords in title tags are now 0.82% more important). If you do that, you’re focusing on the wrong information. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to be learned from algo updates.
You shouldn’t be solely reactive to algorithmic changes, but when they happen, it’s worth trying to understand them to validate that you’re on the right track
With that in mind, here’s what I look at in the wake of an algorithmic update:
Information is usually mostly useful:
At scale
Within your niche
Talk about recent update re: health sites
How, if at all, did this impact the sites I work on?
Across the board? Check SEO Twitter, WebmasterWorld Forums. What do other impacted sites have in common with mine?
Most of the time it’s not that you lost rankings - it’s that someone else gained them. What does the SERP say?
It is not always possible to regain rankings or traffic for a keyword you’ve lost
Sometimes it’s not a matter of a penalty or of something that was working, no longer working
Sometimes it’s that the kind of page, or the kind of information, that Google has determined users are looking for has changed
E.g. “best whatever” almost always returns aggregators over individual whatever providers
Understanding the end goal (not what, but why?) of a given algorithmic pattern or change can give you insight into how your target audiences are using search to make decisions
Ask yourself: What do these things say about what my customers are looking for?
How can I provide those things…
...in ways that Google can see and understand?
There's a compelling argument to be made that when an algorithm is focused on improving Google's results quality in a certain respect or fixing an existing flaw, it's almost certainly not the last time they'll try to improve there. An algo update around content quality probably means they're going to continue iterating on that.
Like with health sites, it would have behooved anyone to start really ramping up the quality signals on their sites after the March update
Does Google look at (X Thing) as a ranking factor?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it
If it’s easy to game, they may still be working out how to make it less gameable
You should want high organic CTR and good dwell time because they’re a signal that you’re providing humans with what they want
That’s the future.
So now that we’ve reminded ourselves of what we’re trying to do, let’s revisit those two SEO battlegrounds we talked about earlier.
Does Google look at (X Thing) as a ranking factor?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it
If it’s easy to game, they may still be working out how to make it less gameable
You should want high organic CTR and good dwell time because they’re a signal that you’re providing humans with what they want
Does Google look at (X Thing) as a ranking factor?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it
If it’s easy to game, they may still be working out how to make it less gameable
You should want high organic CTR and good dwell time because they’re a signal that you’re providing humans with what they want
Does Google look at (X Thing) as a ranking factor?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it
If it’s easy to game, they may still be working out how to make it less gameable
You should want high organic CTR and good dwell time because they’re a signal that you’re providing humans with what they want
Does Google look at (X Thing) as a ranking factor?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it
If it’s easy to game, they may still be working out how to make it less gameable
You should want high organic CTR and good dwell time because they’re a signal that you’re providing humans with what they want
Does Google look at (X Thing) as a ranking factor?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it
If it’s easy to game, they may still be working out how to make it less gameable
You should want high organic CTR and good dwell time because they’re a signal that you’re providing humans with what they want
Does Google look at (X Thing) as a ranking factor?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it
If it’s easy to game, they may still be working out how to make it less gameable
You should want high organic CTR and good dwell time because they’re a signal that you’re providing humans with what they want
Does Google look at (X Thing) as a ranking factor?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it
If it’s easy to game, they may still be working out how to make it less gameable
You should want high organic CTR and good dwell time because they’re a signal that you’re providing humans with what they want
Does Google look at (X Thing) as a ranking factor?
If it’s a machine-readable proxy to a human-readable quality signal, they’ve probably at least tried it
If it’s easy to game, they may still be working out how to make it less gameable
You should want high organic CTR and good dwell time because they’re a signal that you’re providing humans with what they want