1) The document discusses how information cascades occur when people observe the actions of others and make similar choices without relying on their own information. 2) It notes various "SEO truths" that are questioned, such as the importance of on-page factors, authorship, and penalties only affecting SEOs. Industry survey data suggests a shift in focus from links to content and new tools for content marketing and tracking visibility. 3) Bill Sebald is named the "SEO of the year" for testing assumptions and hacking future search engine results pages. The author predicts future pain and a need to plan non-HTML SEO strategies focused on technologies like knowledge graphs, structured data, and

1. Learn from the Herd
SearchLove Boston 2014
Matthew Brown – @MatthewJBrown

2. Prologue: I‟m proud to be a
part of the SEO herd
Forgive me for any trash talk!

3. Credit: Dvidshu
How we see ourselves

4. Credit: Dvidshu
•
Closer to the truth?

5. Information Cascades
An information (or informational) cascade
occurs when people observe the actions
of others and then make the same choice
that the others have made, independently
of their own private information signals.
[wikipedia]

6. Exhibit A: PageRank Sculpting!

7. Information cascades = Jackpot for Google

8. It‟s just SEOs, Matt, and penalties

9. Don‟t believe the hype

10. SEO “truth”: Brand will save us!

11. Reality: You can still get hit, and for good

12. UK Brands are the latest victims - http://bit.ly/1gRRJI5

13. SEO “truth”: On-page is dead
Are we seeing
decreasing importance
of on-page factors?

14. Or maybe it‟s just moved on from strings

15. SEO “truth”: Authorship is dead

16. Reality: I want my „SEO Guide‟ ranking!

17. What about my beautiful metrics?

18. SEO “truth”: Using markup is suicide

19. Reality: Google don‟t need ya
This is just a
straight-up scrape
of allmenus.com

20. It‟s even happening
to your friends 
SEO “truth”: Google‟s real estate grabs are
always bad

21. SEO “truth”: Any SERP visibility is good

22. Reality: Don‟t forget about searcher intent!

23. SEO “truths” are why I yell (and drink)

24. But I‟ve got 26,000 customers to serve
What have I
done?

25. What the heck are SEOs up to?
Credit: Jouni Seppanen

26. Industry Survey Data

27. Industry trends: SEO not dead, big push to Content

28. Content! Less focus on links

29. Adoption of Content marketing tools
Google is the top three
for content marketing
tools?

30. We hear: Content performance is hard to
measure
“We use GWT, Excel,
Screaming Frog and hack
it all together in one big
spreadsheet.”

31. Not provided: Scattering the herd

32. Moz usage data*
*obviously, correlation != causation

33. Rankings: Consistent, but no huge growth
Consistent rankings usage since Not
Provided. Why?

34. “Rankings will be dead
within one year”
“I still report rankings,
but as a composite
metric. Not individual
rankings.”
“Rankings are part of my
reporting, but near the
back now”
We hear: Rankings are less important

35. We hear: SERP visibility is hard to measure
#3 organic ranking. How
much traffic is that
worth?

36. OSE usage has risen 50% in the last two years
Just Discovered
Links has big
growth within OSE

37. Fresh Web Explorer & Followerwonk growing
FWE usage is up 40% and Followerwonk 17% in the last 12 months

38. Hypothesis: The herd is just starting to break
away from „Old Testament‟ SEO

39. Who‟s leading us?
(my SEO Academy Award)

40. SEO of the Year*
*award has no cash value

41. BILL „m-effin‟ SEBALD!
(@BillSebald)

42. For testing old assumptions - http://bit.ly/MemcTW

43. And hacking future SERPs- http://bit.ly/1cgMoaE
He‟s IN!

44. Keep hacking!

45. Hack together your SEO experiments:
http://bit.ly/1bdY7ZH
Test these on
your own sites!

46. Hack your visibility - Google ved parameter:
http://bit.ly/1jLKqVr http://bit.ly/1cs4Wll

47. Hack your competition - Nerdy Data:
http://nerdydata.com/

48. Hack your competitor‟s strategy - Rival IQ:
https://www.rivaliq.com/

49. My prediction for our future? PAIN.

50. Start thinking about your “Future SERPs”

51. Plan a „non-HTML‟ SEO strategy
KG cards for Google Glass - http://bit.ly/1lsjG9V

52. Early adoption: Your only option
New tech like JSON-LD for data markup - http://bit.ly/1k52cmx
JSON-LD lets you
send schema.org
markup using
JSON instead of
HTML

53. If you haven‟t started, you‟re late
Common crawl stats for Nov 2013 - http://bit.ly/1k7Nprm
585 million URLs have
structured data now, up
almost 50% from last
year. Schema.org is half
of the total.

54. Get Freebase dialed in: YESTERDAY

55. Roll your own Knowledge Graph - http://bit.ly/1fGAjgM

56. It‟s all about Google+
Google is rolling in identity layers for everything

57. The best part: We‟re in the driver‟s seat!

58. Thanks for letting me rant!