SEO Red Flags & Sustainability - Pubcon Austin 2018
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Discussing things to watch out for in SEO and strategies that will stand the test of time. Presented at Pubcon Austin on February 21, 2018.
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SEO Red Flags & Sustainability - Pubcon Austin 2018
- 1. Hive Digital, Inc. “Marketing a Better World” @jakebohall
- 2. VP, Marketing at Hive Digital Jake Bohall @jakebohall jbohall@hivedigital.com Jake is passionate about education reform and representing companies focused on providing opportunities for inspiring entrepreneurship, discovering life purpose, and improving quality of life. @jakebohall
- 3. The Hive Digital Vision To be a full service digital agency dedicated to serving companies working on creating a better world @jakebohall
- 4. Machines Aren’t StupidFasten Your Seatbelts @jakebohall
- 5. @jakebohall
- 7. How Do Search Engines Work? Internet → Filtered by Relevance Relevant → Sorted by Authority Polished & Personalized The Answer You’ve Been Looking For! @jakebohall
- 8. Great Marketing … & SEO • Luck = Preparation + Opportunity • Rankings = (Relevance + Authority) + Intent @jakebohall
- 9. How do I obtain SEO Success? ● You have an easily identifiable purpose and value. ● Your content addresses the needs of the users in a way that is easy for them to consume. ● You demonstrate authority in your field ● You make it easy for search engines to confirm all of the above @jakebohall
- 10. Assumptions • Duplicate / Too Similar Content, Infinite crawl spaces • Canonical Tags (cross domains too!) • Best URL Structure (subfolders, hyphens, casing, etc.) • Sitemaps (indices, including representative images) • Responsive vs. subdomains (rel=alternate, canonicals!) • Search Quality Raters guidelines re: YMYL, Contact info • Page load times (compression, sprites, lazy-loading, cdn) • Breadcrumbs, hreflang tags, response headers, etc.. @jakebohall
- 11. @jakebohall
- 12. Content Strategy Red Flags ● Off Topic ● Keyword Tunnelvision ● Not Technical ● Unmixed Content ● Volume > Quality ● Not In Answer Boxes Sustainable Strategies ● Content Creation - Should be done by expert contributors. Strategy should be organized in traditional content calendar. ● Existing Content Updates - Content needs to be inventoried to determine lifecycle, and ensure priority in crawl. ● Engagement Driven - Implement and review data from user search to determine content focus and priority of delivery within the website. Discover Opportunities Drive Improvement Stay Ahead @jakebohall
- 13. @jakebohall
- 14. Evaluate Query Intent Do you know what personas you are targeting… ? Does it match the persona of those performing search? Are you fresh? Do you have geo-indicators in content? Do they want an answer, list of ideas, product to buy? @jakebohall
- 15. To succeed, you must …be the answer. @jakebohall
- 16. Topics to Target Can have great keyword coverage, but efforts always needed to focus on trending terms and “Position 0” opportunities. A few highlights of efforts needed: ● Identify terms generating answer box opportunities and our representative page. Prioritize content improvements to be best candidate for answer boxes. ● Perform keyword gap analysis with competitors to identify missed opportunities. @jakebohall
- 17. Schema Markup For all the things! @jakebohall
- 20. Discover Opportunities Drive Improvement Stay Ahead Crawler Experience Red Flags ● Low Crawl Rate ● Inaccurate Index Counts ● Log Files Show Wasted Crawl ● Too Many Canonicals ● Page Speed ● Rendering Issues ● Orphan Pages ● Proper Headers Sustainable Strategies ● HTTPS - Continue maintaining proper privacy / security for users ● Mobile 1st Indexing - Ultimately reflects focus for user 1st strategies. ● Control Sprawl - Be diligent to avoid creating unnecessary pages, infinite crawl spaces, etc. ● Internal Linking - Breadcrumbs (with markup!), help direct / focus visitors ● Segmented Site Maps @jakebohall
- 21. @jakebohall
- 22. Discover Opportunities Drive Improvement Stay Ahead Crawler Experience Red Flags ● Low Crawl Rate ● Inaccurate Index Counts ● Log Files Show Wasted Crawl ● Too Many Canonicals ● Page Speed ● Rendering Issues ● Orphan Pages ● Proper Headers Sustainable Strategies ● HTTPS - Continue maintaining proper privacy / security for users ● Mobile 1st Indexing - Ultimately reflects focus for user 1st strategies. ● Control Sprawl - Be diligent to avoid creating unnecessary pages, infinite crawl spaces, etc. ● Internal Linking - Breadcrumbs (with markup!), help direct / focus visitors ● Segmented Site Maps @jakebohall
- 23. @jakebohall
- 24. @jakebohall
- 26. @jakebohall
- 27. To Block... Or Not To Block... @jakebohall
- 28. SERP Experience Red Flags ● Low CTR ● Sometimes Bounce Rate ● Off Topic Rankings ● Volatility (GSC) ● More Answer Boxes! Sustainable Strategies ● Adwords Ads - Use adwords ad copy as test for page meta descriptions. ● Site Links Search Box - Immediate satisfaction and data collection opportunity. ● Prominent Content - Make sure information in “Main Content” is not distracted. Bucket customers when you can! ● Identify “why” Google displays page(s) in SERP. Discover Opportunities Drive Improvement Stay Ahead @jakebohall
- 29. @jakebohall
- 31. @jakebohall
- 33. <script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "http://schema.org", "@type": "WebSite", "url": "https://www.example.com/", "potentialAction": { "@type": "SearchAction", "target": "https://query.example.com/search?q={search_term_string}", "query-input": "required name=search_term_string" } } </script> @jakebohall
- 34. L-U-C-K Principal Listen Understand Connect Know … your users @jakebohall
- 35. @jakebohall
- 36. Are you this smart? @jakebohall
- 38. Great Marketing Takes Practice, Patience, and GENUINE Effort @jakebohall
- 40. The Success Cycle Benchmarking Behaviour Tracking KPI Reporting Grant Management Channel Targeting Account Set-Up Daily Monitoring Keyword Discovery Technical Audits Content Marketing Link Development Web Analytics Strategy Audit Audience Selection Account Management Conversion Optimization Paid Advertising Social Media Marketing Analyze Results Make Data Driven Changes Test for Improved Results Search Marketing 1 Define Success Discover Opportunities Drive Improvement ...Do it Again! @jakebohall
- 41. Image Credit: www.steve-dale.net/ Be Smart… Evolve @jakebohall
- 42. If Content is King, Links are Queen… (and she wears the pants!) … ☺ @jakebohall
- 43. The Hive Digital Mission Hive Digital empowers globally responsible companies, organizations, and individuals by amplifying their message through innovative digital marketing. We use integrity, transparency and humility to promote a nurturing environment, which translates to growth for our clients and our company. We hope you’ll let us be a part of your change in the world. HiveDigital.com @HiveMarketing 800-650-0820
Editor's Notes
- Started doing online marketing when Myspace was still cool... If you are still using it… it’s not cool anymore… Tom’s not really your friend. Speaking/Attending PubCon since 2008.. Im VP of marketing and head SEO strategy at Hive Digital --- do technical audits, consulting, etc.. I work daily to help clients leverage their products/services to do good in the world…
- Pay Attention, I’m going to move quick!
- RankBrain .. SEOs seem to reference this to generalize Machine Learning within the algo. Goal: Better at interpreting natural language and query intent Long Term Impacts: Longer tail queries perpetuating a cycle of more natural query input Extracting query intent to deliver THE ANSWER
- It’s not just Rank Brain Future is all things algo based on Machine learning … Most spam, low quality, etc.. when Obvious to Us… really obvious to them Closer to machines being able to understand, predict, and even mimic human behaviours Trusted with making life/death decisions for us… Self driving cars Self flying planes Fixes all my typos Reminding me when my anniversary is...
- Simple black box…. At least in concept.. Query – Natural Language Processing, Semantic Analysis, Entity Extraction and Topic Modeling to filter entire internet by relevance Authority – Citations, Validators, Brand Sentiment/Strength, Social Trends, Relational Authority Polished – Trending Topics, CTR data Personalized - Location, Search History,. Penalty Application – Removing spam, etc..
- We can easily exhaust ourselves focusing on all the aspects of SEO…
- Guetzli – Image compression for jpg by Google https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/google-jpeg-guetzli-encoder-file-size/
- We don’t control authority AKA link strategies.. (at least not supposed to!) … what do you control? - Crawler Experience User Experience Content
- New content ideas -- Monitor competitor twitter accounts, newsletters, etc. -- If you have similar, promote it.. Of not, create it and piggyback -- MarketMuse, Moz, SemRush, all launching tools to help with topic clustering for cornerstone --- conceptually not new… Inventory content so you can consolidate overlaps, diary so you can revisit/refresh --- every page should have an expiration date – create an actual calendar and schedule your content for review when it is created. Engagement comes from understanding intent..
- How is your content used to benefit your purpose and meet the intent of users.. Write for context that matches intent.…
- Generate your content along the buyer’s journey. Google released a report tracking queries of someone looking for a car. Best cars for families Safest cars Mini-van vs. SUV Stylish mini van Honda Odyssey vs. Toyota Sienna Cost of a Honda Odyssey Honda Dealers near me
- Position 0
- === Ranking 5-20 -- unbranded terms === Keywords competitors are focusing -- Informational sites vs. commercial sites
- Json-LD makes life a lot easier… Bandaid (data highlighter in GSC), don’t forget Tag Manager Website, Company, location, business type, recipes, events, people, industry services -- travel/auto, etc.. If it can be an entity, it should get markup… Use structed data testing tool. You can test rendered versions here as well.
- Time, everyone with me?
- Make it easy for crawlers (and users) to find the “gold”
- Test HTTPS -- All too often see redirects messed up here across www/non-www Leverage SiteMap Indices so you can see #pages indexed, errors, etc. in groups -- product categories -- content categories Etc.. great for monitoring for quick issues!
- Barry Adams is not a fan of that phrase….
- Test HTTPS -- All too often see redirects messed up here across www/non-www Leverage SiteMap Indices so you can see #pages indexed, errors, etc. in groups -- product categories -- content categories Etc.. great for monitoring for quick issues!
- Use the new search console and start troubleshooting
- What are the problems?
- Ryan Siddle with Merj built a plugin to give links in the new GSC… Sidenote, they have an awesome robots.txt monitoring tool
- Set up Query Parameters in Search Console -- Get professional advice if you don’t know what something means.. The warning isn’t a joke.
- Robots.txt vs. Meta Robots (noindex, follow).. Unless crawl budget issue, consider only noindex, follow.. --- Keeps it out of index, passes link equity through the site
- CTR should be optimized…use adwords ad copy testing! Bucket / Disambiguate … bush Band, President, Shrub, Adult Pics, Beer Misspelling you have to not only sell the click, but deliver on that user intent!
- Content Delivery Mix content types for likelihood of being included in featured snippets, images, etc. Price/comparison – Get a chart How & How to – Get a list Why – Noun is X … clearly defined on the page
- Site-links search box… -- lately noticed on a few sites that didn’t “start” until https, correlation? -- helps users get where they need to go -- make sure you track search in analytics ---- make improvements parse intent, build better pages … build “popular” links from homepage!... second page poaching opp
- Luck principle - Listen-Understand-Connect-Know your users Geoff Ables – Author of “The Luck Principal”.. Mostly talks about CRMs.. I think it applies here..
- If you know what your users are looking for, then you can more easily fix keyword cannibalization… -- consolidate content where possible or make it clearly unique
- Will Hunting – The future of search is wholly dependent upon our working together. Google’s algorithm is one of the most complex algorithms in the world.. designed/maintained by an incredibly talented team of intellects/ engineers. No one SEO person or agency has all the answers… it is a black box we poke that returns some data we can use for predicting best practices. As search marketers we understand the challenges our industry faces, and we quickly come together to solve these problems. This is why I love Pubcon and appreciate all of you being a part of the future of SEO!
- You are competing with at least thousands of other businesses… and you can’t fake it anymore. We can easily exhaust ourselves focusing on all the aspects of SEO… I had a trainer… obviously not any time recently… but he would tell me.. If you aren’t “out of breath”, you aren’t working hard enough. You can’t half do things.. Not just talking about trying really hard.. How do sites build real content or get real links? They worked really hard, and had some LUCK.
- You are competing with at least thousands of other businesses… and you can’t fake it anymore. How do sites build real content or get real links? They worked really hard, and had some LUCK.
- This isn’t a ronco commercial… can’t set it and forget
- Have to change with the times.. Have to experiment Be better… Everyday 78% of search results have some rankings change -- Moz
- Sustainable link strategies are consistent outreach to promote your content. Fix your redirects or visit sites with old broken links and get them fixed If you acquired any companies, go back and audit their backlinks for updates Give something away.