You've figured out what's wrong, and you've delivered a laundry list of demands to your web dev team: re-index these pages, fix this duplicate content, redirect these URLs... but how often are those fixes prioritized, and how much time do you invest in pushing to get them there?
Cultivating a positive, productive relationship with your web developers is one of the smartest (and most empathetic) things you can do as an SEO. After all, they're your other half, the key to getting your work done quickly and well. In this Whiteboard Friday, Britney Muller shares six essential ways to get your web dev on board with SEO, from working to better understand their role and offer help when you can, to sharing your wins and asking for feedback on working together.
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Video Transcription
Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we're talking all about how to get your web dev on board with SEO. So really excited. I think you'll notice my biggest point here, and I couldn't feel more strongly about the fact that we really do have so much to learn from developers, it's wild.
Hopefully, this video helps kind of open some of your minds or expand some of the ways in which you can do that, because it will make you a lot stronger.
1. Create a genuine relationship with developers and work to better understand their role
First and foremost, create a genuine relationship with the developers you work with. Better understand their role and how they're measuring their own success. Know what languages they program in. Better understanding their perspective and their opinion on things helps you create a better working relationship. Part of that is cultivating trust.
One of the ways in which I've found some success cultivating that trust is just admitting when I have no idea how to implement a particular SEO fix. Or even when I think that I do, I prefer to ask, "What is the best way you see this being implemented? How would you most efficiently implement this change or optimization?" More frequently than not, they will have a way better way to make these website changes because they have that backend knowledge of the website.
Being humble, expressing that you don't know everything, you're not trying to step in and tell them how to program pages or how to fix that, it should be way more of a communication and a transaction of just information from both sides.
2. Learning from developers helps you become a stronger SEO
I promise you. It is one of my most favorite things working here at Moz. I have learned so much from the developers here. But likewise, some of the developers have learned things from myself and other fellow SEOs that work here. This is a symbiotic working relationship, where developers want to program sites and pages that do well in search.
I think it's part of your job to express and communicate the potential value of a well-crafted web page. Show them how much more powerful their code and their work can be if set up properly or set up with thinking about JavaScript and Google crawling different aspects of it.
That's what makes it a really efficient working relationship. Be open to just learning new things from your developers.
3. Be a champion of the developers you work with
Understand what it is they're trying to accomplish. If there's any way you can help support that or consider that in your work and the things you're making progress on, it's a win-win.
4. Create a workflow/process to keep an eye on dev changes and catch things early
This is a common problem. Something that a lot of people ask about is creating this workflow or process in which you can keep an eye on dev changes. For really large websites, this can get unwieldy. It can be difficult to keep an eye on changes that might affect SEO.
But if you can have that conversation with a developer or a team of developers that you work with on: What's the best way to manage this? Can you add me to GitHub so I can look at things that are getting pushed? Whatever that might be, it can really help create the space where you're doing preventative SEO. You're making sure that nothing goes terribly wrong in the future and makes it more manageable in the long run.
5. Share your SEO wins with your developers — and thank them!
Share your SEO wins with the developers, especially when they've helped you and maybe have provided better solutions. You should absolutely thank them, and what a great opportunity to sort of share in those wins and continue to grow that working relationship.
6. Ask for feedback
Lastly, ask for feedback. If you feel like you're struggling to communicate with a group of developers or a single developer, just be honest and use some radical candor and ask, "How can I better work with you? How can I better support you?" Opening that up for some feedback can also help to strengthen the relationship.
Bonus: The brand-new Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet
Then the one last thing that I hope you can really leverage as a tool to grow in your SEO efforts and to help you get more things done with the development team is The Web Developer's Cheat Sheet for SEO.
This is a great resource to open up this conversation with developers, to sit down and have a conversation about why some of these things are important to you as an SEO and what comes to mind when they look at it. They have a totally different perspective on a lot of the things within this sheet.
It's a great opportunity for you to sit down and have those conversations and be able to excel in your SEO efforts. I hope some of this helps. I think it's one of the most important things in getting SEO work done and seeing that success.
Please let me know what you think down below in the comments. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this, what's worked for you, what hasn't worked for you, and what other questions you have. I will see you all again soon. Thanks.
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Only a few days left before Valentine’s. But, if you’re already living with the love of your life, you have a reason to celebrate it every day. Make each moment more special by following these tips:
Choose the right window treatment One should select such window curtains or dressings that are plush, alluring and dark so that it can curb lights from traffic or any sort of external noise from intervening in the romantic mood that is created. Source:Freshome
Glow with fairy lights String lights aren’t only for the holidays. You wouldn’t want to wrap your bedroom in bright colors or blinking bulbs, but a single string of white lights is quite romantic. Wrap the lights around your footboard or headboard or weave them over the curtain rod, the doorframe, or even across the ceiling over your bed. You’ll get a soft glow similar to candlelight without the need to worry about flames or fumes. Very pretty. Source:TheSpruce
Create a hideout Have a space in your home that you’re not really using? Clear out the junk and make it a place for your loved one to enjoy instead. Add furniture and touches that you know they’ll enjoy, such as wall paint in their favorite color, or the perfect storage solution for their favorite collection. Source:ChoiceHomeWarranty
Talk with a florist That’s right—have a conversation with someone who lives and breathes gorgeous blooms. You know roses sell for top dollar this time of year, so to save some cash (and avoid being totally on the nose) steer clear of this obvious choice and pick something sentimental in an unexpected color.
Julie Coraccio, a professional organizer with Reawaken Your Brilliance, recommends fragrant lilies or wildflowers.
“Find something that looks like you picked it from your yard and has a carefree sense,” she says. Source:Realtor
Have bigger home improvements in mind? We’ll take care of them for you! Call us today!
I’m not a literary scholar, but I believe it was Hamlet that said “to have a featured snippet or not to have a featured snippet?” Ever since featured snippets came onto the scene, sites have been trying to secure them.
My team and I wanted in on this craze. Throughout our journey of research, testing, failure, and success, we found some interesting pieces of information that we wanted to share with the community. I’ll walk you through what we did and show you some of our results (though can’t share traffic numbers).
A featured snippet is the box that appears at the top of the search result page that provides information to succinctly and accurately answer your query and cites a website.
Why are featured snippets important?
A featured snippet is important because it represents an additional SERP feature that you can secure. Usually located at the very top of the results page, featured snippets offer you greater visibility to searchers and can boost brand recognition.
Our featured snippet plan of attack
Research, research, and more research on how to pull this off
Did we implement everything from what we learned during this discovery phase into our featured snippet strategy? No. Are we perfect at it now after a year and a half of practicing this? No, no, no. We are getting better at it, though.
2. Identify keywords we wanted to target
We originally started out focusing on big “head” keywords. These represented terms that had indeterminate searcher intent. The first head term that we focused on was HRIS. It stands for Human Resources Information System — sexy, right?
Note: Looking back on this, I wish we had focused on longer tail keywords when testing out this strategy. It's possible we could have refined our process faster focusing on long tail keywords instead of the large head terms.
3. Change how we structure our on-page content
We worked closely with our writing team to update how we lay out content on our blog. We changed how we used H2s, H3s (we actually used them now!), lists, and so on to help make our content easier to read for both users and robots.
In most of the content where we’re trying to rank for a featured snippet, we have an H2 in the form of a question. Immediately after the H2, we try and answer that question. We’ve found this to be highly successful (see pictures later on in the post). I wish I could say that we learned this tactic on our first try, but it took several months before this dawned on us.
4. Measure, test, and repeat
The first blog post that we tried this out on was our “What is an HRIS” article. Overall, this post was a success, it ranked for the head term that we were going for (HRIS), but we didn’t win a featured snippet. We deemed it a slight failure and went back to work.
This is where the fun started.
Featured snippet successes
We discovered a featured snippet trigger that we could capitalize on — mainly by accident. What was it?
Is.
Really. That was it. Just by adding that to some of our content, we started to pick up featured snippets. We started to do it more and more, and we were winning more and more featured snippets! I believe it was this strategic HR example that clued us onto the “is” trigger.
So we kept it up.
What did we learn?
I want to preface this by saying that all of this is anecdotal evidence. We haven’t looked at several million URLs, run it through any fancy number-crunching, or had a statistician look at the data. These are just a few examples that we’ve noticed that, when repeated, have worked for us.
Blog/HR glossary - We found that it was easier for us to gain featured snippets from our blog or our glossary pages. It seemed like no matter what optimizations that we made on the product page, we weren’t able to make it happen.
Is - No, not the clown from the Stephen King novel. “Is” seemed to be the big trigger word for winning featured snippets. During our audit, we did find some examples of list featured snippets, but the majority were paragraphs and the trigger word was "is."
Definitions - We saw that definitions of the head term we were trying to go for was usually what got the definition. Our on-page copy would have the H2 with the keyword (e.g. What is Employee Orientation?) and then the paragraph copy would answer that question.
Updating old posts - One surprising thing we learned is that when we went back to old posts and tried adding the “is” trigger word, we didn’t see a change — even if we added a good amount of new content to the page. We were only able to grab featured snippets with new content that we created. Also, when we updated large amounts of content on a few pages that had featured snippets, we lost them. We made sure to not touch the sections of the page that the snippet was pulling from, but we still lost the snippet (some have come back, but some are still gone).
Conclusion
A few final things to note:
First, while these examples are anecdotal, I think that they show some practices that anyone wanting to capture featured snippets can do.
Second, this was process was over a 12–18 month period and we’re still evolving what we think is the best way for us and our content team.
Third, we had a lot of failures with this. I showed you one example, but we’ve had many (short-form content, long-form content, glossary terms, blog posts, etc.) that didn’t work. We just kept measuring, testing, and optimizing.
Lastly, I need to give a shout out to our writing team. We massively disrupted their process with this and they have been phenomenal to work with (effective interdepartmental relationships are crucial for any SEO project).
Let me know what's worked for you or if you have any questions by leaving a comment down below.
Note: On January 23, 2020 Google announced that featured snippets would no longer be listed twice on the first page. For more information, you can check out this thread from Google Search Liaison. This may change how valuable featured snippets are to companies and the amount of clicks a listing gets. Before you start to panic, remember it will be important to watch and measure how this affects your site before doing anything drastic. If you do decide to go nuclear and to remove your featured snippets from the results, check out this documentation.
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A rising tide lifts all ships — and it's similar story with increased site authority. What factors are affected as you improve PageRank or Domain Authority, and how? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus details seven SEO processes that are made easier by a strong investment in link building and growing your authority.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Cyrus Shepard. Quick Whiteboard this week. I want to talk about links.
We know in SEO we love links. Everybody wants links. But why? What do links do for you? They do a surprising amount for you that we sometimes don't realize. So the title of today's Whiteboard, "7 SEO Processes That Get Easier with Increased PageRank and Domain Authority." So why did we choose PageRank and Domain Authority?
Well, these are both algorithms that measure link power, both the number of links and the quantity of links. PageRank being Google's algorithm to rank web pages based on popularity and importance. Domain Authority, which Google doesn't use, just to be clear, Domain Authority being a Moz algorithm that measures both link quantity and quality.
For our purposes, we can basically use them in the same conversation. We're talking about the power of your links.
1. Ranking ability
The first thing that everybody knows about is links help you rank. They help you rank in many, many ways. You can get higher rankings. You can attack more keywords, but most importantly, you can attack more competitive keywords.
A good thing I like to do is, when I'm trying to see if I can rank for a keyword, simply Google it, check the Page Authority, which is a very similar metric, of all the top ranking pages, see what your Page Authority is for your top ranking keywords, and you can kind of have a pretty good idea if you have an ability to rank for that keyword.
2. Crawl budget
But then we get into the nitty-gritty, the other benefits of having that link equity, one of the most important being crawl budget.
When you have more link equity, Google will crawl more of your pages. If you only have a handful of links and a million pages on your website, it's going to be very difficult to get Google to crawl and index all those million pages. If you're eBay or Amazon or Google or a site with like a 100 Domain Authority, yes, you might be able to attract Google to crawl those million pages.
3. Indexation speed
Google will also crawl them faster. You may get Google to crawl your pages with low Domain Authority, but it's going to take a while for Google to visit those again. So then we get into the idea of indexation speed. With a higher Domain Authority, Google is going to crawl and index your content typically much faster than they would without.
So if you have a page that you've updated recently, you're going to see Google update it quicker the more authority that page has. Also you're going to see this in the SERPs. If you have outdated title tags or meta descriptions, you can ask Google to crawl it via the Submit URL tool. But generally, the more authority a page has, the more incoming link power, you're going to see those things updated so much quicker than you would with low link equity.
4. More powerful links
This is my favorite one. With increased link equity, your own links become more powerful, and this gives you incredible ranking power because your internal links, that you're linking to yourself, become more powerful with that link equity. So it makes everything easier to rank. The best link building you can do when you have high authority is linking to yourself, and it's so easy.
But also the links that you link out to other people also become more valuable, which makes you a more attractive target.
5. Insulation from bad links
My friend Everett Sizemore came up with that word "insulation." With better link equity, you're somewhat protected from a handful of bad links. Now if you have low link equity and you get a bunch of spam links to your site, your risk of penalization or being impacted by negative SEO increases pretty high.
But if you have a million links, a handful of bad links just aren't going to hurt you. A good way to think about this is ratios, because, of course, anybody can get penalized. Anybody can suffer the consequences of bad links. But if those bad links only make up a tiny portion, meaning a small ratio, then you are somewhat insulated by the impact of those bad links.
6. Less over-optimization
Now Google says they don't have an over-optimization penalty. But anecdotally, many SEOs understand that if you're a small site, you're just starting out, it's very easy to over-optimize for keywords with exact match anchor text and not rank. The key usually: in SEO, you want a lot of variety.
With a lot of links, that variety is much easier to get, and you have much less risk of over-optimization in linking internally with exact match anchor text. You can get away with a lot more with higher Domain Authority than you can with less Domain Authority. That's kind of the key to this whole thing. With higher Domain Authority, you just get away with a lot more. It's the idea of the rich getting richer.
7. The flywheel effect
Rand Fishkin, our friend, likes to talk about the flywheel effect. When you have more links, everything gets easier. When you start ranking and people start seeing you in the SERPs, you're going to get more links from that content, and more links are going to equal more ranking and the wheel is just going to keep turning and turning.
More people want to link to you and amplify you and work with you. You're also going to get a lot more spam requests and link requests and things like that, so it isn't fun. But generally, the more Domain Authority you have, the more PageRank you have, the easier life is going to get, and you just want to start building it up day after day after day. So, like I said, a quick and easy Whiteboard Friday this week.
Hope you enjoyed it. We'll talk to you next time. Thanks, everybody.
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Are you planning to DIY the removal of some damaged shingles on your roof? It’s a difficult task, but with caution, you can certainly pull it off. Take a look at the necessary steps you need to take to ensure a successful, risk-free project.
Wear safety equipment Before you begin any work on your roof, you want to ensure your safety equipment is in good repair in order to get the job done. Safety equipment such as ladders, ropes and harnesses should be checked for any defects. Be sure to include safety goggles, gloves and sunscreen when you are considering doing work on your roof. Also, a straw hat is good for keeping the sun out of your eyes. Rubber soled shoes in good repair will ensure you keep your footing while on your roof. Source:DoItYourself
Begin at the top Start at the peak of the roof. Use a garden fork to pry off the shingles from the ridge cap. Slide the tines of the fork underneath the shingles and felt paper. Lift the garden fork straight up to release the shingles from the roof.
Divide your work area Continue working in 2-foot- to 3-foot-wide sections across the roof, working down as you walk across. Dispose of the shingles as you go. Work slowly and carefully around the flashing, chimney or skylights. Pull the loosened shingles off by hand around these areas. Source:HomeGuides.SFGate
Clean up Once you have finished removing the old roofing and nails, sweep the roof to get rid of any debris before you begin laying your new moisture barrier. You’ll want a push broom to make this job go faster.
Though a regular brush can be used to get all the loose nails into one pile to scoop up, it’s more efficient to have a magnetic broom. These are magnets on wheels that you roll over the surface to collect any metal items left behind. They can be as simple as a magnet on wheels, or they can have a brush, magnet, and vacuum. They are handy on rooftops, but excellent to roll over the ground. They’ll pick up nails you may not be able to see that are down in your grass.
Once you have finished, find a dry place to store your extra shingles for later use. Make sure that they lay flat, so they don’t become misshapen. They won’t be any use to you in the future if they aren’t flat. Source:HealthyHandyman
Endangering yourself to save a few dollars isn’t worth it. If, in the tiniest bit, you’re not sure whether you can manage to do some roof work yourself, it would be best to leave the task to the pros. Call us today to get your free estimate!
In 2014, Google introduced the featured snippet, a promoted organic ranking that we affectionately (some days were more affectionate than others) referred to as "position zero" or "ranking #0." One of the benefits to being in position zero was that you got to double-dip, with your organic listing appearing in both the featured snippet and page-1 results (usually in the top 3–4). On January 23, Google announced a significant change (which rolled out globally on January 22) ...
"Declutters" sounds innocuous, but the impact to how we think about featured snippets and organic rankings is significant. So, let's dig deep into some examples and the implications for SEO.
What does this mean for Moz?
First, a product announcement. In the past, we treated Featured Snippets as stand-alone SERP features — they were identified in our "SERP Features" report but were not treated as organic due to the second listing. As of Saturday, January 25 (shout-out to many of our team for putting in a long weekend), we began rolling out data that treats the featured snippet as position #1. SERPs with featured snippets will continue to be tagged in SERP Features reporting, and we're working on ways to surface more data.
Here's a partial screenshot of our "SERP Features" report from one of my own experiments ...
At a glance, you can see which keywords displayed a featured snippet (the scissor icon), owned that featured snippet (highlighted in blue), as well as your organic ranking for those keywords. We're working on bringing more of this data into the Rankings report in the near future.
If you're a Moz Pro customer and would like to see this in action, you can jump directly to your SERP Features report using the button below (please let us know what you think about the update):
This change brings our data in line with Google's view that a featured snippet is a promoted organic result and also better aligns us with Google Search Console data. Hopefully, it also helps provide customers with more context about their featured snippets as organic entities.
How does Google count to 10?
Let's take a deeper look at the before and after of this change. Here are the desktop organic results (left-column only) from a search for "LCD vs LED" on January 21st ...
Pardon some big images, but I promise there's method to my madness. In the "before" screenshot above, we can clearly see that the featured snippet URL is duplicated as the #1 organic result (note: I've added the green box and removed a People Also Ask box). Ranking #1 wasn't always the case prior to January 22nd, but most featured snippet URLs appeared in the #1–#3 organic positions, and all of them came from page-one results.
Here's the same SERP from January 23rd ...
You can see that not only is the featured snippet URL missing from the #1 position, but it doesn't appear on page one at all. There's more to this puzzle, though. Look at the January 21st SERP again, but numbered ...
Notice that, even with the featured snippet, page one displays 10 full organic results. This was part of our rationale for treating the featured snippet as the #0 position and a special case, even though it came from organic results. We also debated whether duplicating data in rankings reports added value for customers or just created confusion.
Now, look at the numbered SERP from January 23rd ...
The duplicate URL hasn't been replaced — it's been removed entirely. So, we're only left with 10 total results, including the featured snippet itself. If we started with #0, we'd be left with a page-one SERP that goes from #0–#9.
What about double snippets?
In rare cases, Google may show two featured snippets in a row. If you haven't seen one of these in action, here's an example for the search "Irish names" from January 21st ...
I've highlighted the organic URLs to show that, prior to the update, both featured snippet URLs appeared on page one. A quick count will also show you that there are 10 traditional organic listings and 12 total listings (counting the two featured snippets).
Here's that same SERP from January 23rd, which I've numbered ...
In this case, both featured snippet URLs have been removed from the traditional organic listings, and we're left once again with 10 total page-one results. We see the same pattern with SERP features (such as Top Stories or Video carousels) that occupy an organic position. Whatever the combination in play, the featured snippet appears to count as one of the 10 results on page one after January 22nd.
What about right-hand side panels?
More recently, Google introduced a hybrid desktop result that looks like a Knowledge Panel but pulls information from organic results, like a Featured Snippet. Here's an example from January 21st (just the panel) ...
In the left-hand column, the same Wordstream URL ranked #3 in organic results (I've truncated the image below to save your scrolling finger) ...
After January 22nd, this URL was also treated as a duplicate, which was met with considerable public outcry. Unlike the prominent Featured Snippet placement, many people felt (including myself) that the panel-style UI was confusing and very likely to reduce click-through rate (CTR). In a fairly rare occurrence, Google backtracked on this decision ...
Our data set showed reversal kicking in on January 29th (a week after the initial change). Currently, while some featured snippets are still displayed in right-hand panels (about 30% of all featured snippets across MozCast's 10,000 keywords), those URLs once again appear in the organic listings.
Note that Google has said this is a multi-part project, and they're likely going to be moving these featured snippets back to the left-hand column in the near future. We don't currently know if that means they'll become traditional featured snippets or if they'll evolve into a new entity.
How do I block featured snippets?
Cool your jets, Starscream. Almost the moment Google announced this change, SEOs started talking about how to block featured snippets, including some folks asking publicly about de-optimizing content. "De-optimizing" sounds harmless, but it's really a euphemism for making your own content worse so that it ranks lower. In other words, you're going to take a CTR hit (the organic CTR curve drops off quickly as a power function) to avoid possibly taking a CTR hit. As Ford Prefect wisely said: "There's no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later."
More importantly, there are better options. The oldest currently available option is the meta-nosnippet directive. I'd generally consider this a last resort — as a recent experiment by Claire Carlile re-affirms, meta-nosnippet blocks all snippets/descriptions, including your organic snippet.
As of 2019, we have two more options to work with. The meta-max-snippet directive limits the character-length of search snippets (both featured snippets and organic snippets). It looks something like this ...
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:50">
Setting the max-snippet value to zero should function essentially the same as a nosnippet directive. However, by playing with intermediate values, you might be able to maintain your organic snippet while controlling or removing the featured snippet.
Another relatively new option is the data-nosnippet HTML attribute. This is a tag attribute that you can wrap around content you wish to block from snippets. It looks something like this ...
<span data-nosnippet>I will take this content to the grave!</span>
Ok, that was probably melodramatic, but the data-nosnippet attribute can be wrapped around specific content that you'd like to keep out of snippets (again, this impacts all snippets). This could be very useful if you've got information appearing from the wrong part of a page or even a snippet that just doesn't answer the question very well. Of course, keep in mind that Google could simply select another part of your page for the featured snippet.
One thing to keep in mind: in some cases, Featured snippet content drives voice answers. Danny Sullivan at Google confirmed that, if you block your snippets using one of the methods above, you also block your eligibility for voice answers ...
A featured snippet isn't guaranteed to drive voice answers (there are a few more layers to the Google Assistant algorithms), but if you're interested in ranking for voice, then you may want to proceed with caution. Also keep in mind that there's no position #2 in voice search.
How much should I freak out?
We expect these changes are here to stay, at least for a while, but we know very little about the impact of featured snippets on CTR after January 22nd. In early 2018, Moz did a major, internal CTR study and found the impact of featured snippets almost impossible to interpret, because the available data (whether click-stream or Google Search Console) provided no way to tell if clicks were going to the featured snippet or the duplicated organic URL.
My hunch, informed by that project, is that there are two realities. In one case, featured snippets definitively answer a question and negatively impact CTR. If a concise, self-contained answer is possible, expect some people not to click on the URL. You've given them what they need.
In the other case, though, a featured snippet acts as an incomplete teaser, naturally encouraging clicks (if the information is worthwhile). Consider this featured snippet for "science fair ideas" ...
The "More items..." indicator clearly suggests that this is just part of a much longer list, and I can tell you from my as a parent that I wouldn't stop at the featured snippet. Lists and instructional content are especially well-suited to this kind of teaser experience, as are questions that can't be answered easily in a paragraph.
All of this is to say that I wouldn't take a hatchet to your featured snippets. Answering the questions your visitors ask is a good thing, generally, and drives search visibility. As we learn more about the impact on CTR, it makes sense to be more strategic, but featured snippets are organic opportunities that are here to stay.
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Without a doubt, it is our job as SEOs to keep an eye on the future and anticipate what Google is planning, testing, or looking to drop on our doorsteps. Over the past 12 months alone, we have seen several changes in Google Search — each impacting how we plan, implement, and report on campaigns.
In this article, I will take a look at what is in store for SEO in 2020 and how these factors will change the way we formulate strategies throughout the next year and beyond.
Artificial intelligence will continue to evolve
Over the past half-decade, artificial intelligence has become a pioneering force in the evolution of SEO.
In 2015, for example, we were introduced to RankBrain -- the machine-based search algorithm that helps Google push more relevant results to users. Although RankBrain is coming up on its fifth birthday, we are only now catching early glimpses into how artificial intelligence will dominate SEO in the coming years.
The most recent step in this progression of artificial learning is, of course, the introduction of Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding (BERT), which Google announced at the end of October. For those who missed it, BERT is Google’s neural network-based technique for natural language processing, and it’s important because it deals with the very fundamentals of how people search. Google itself says that the algorithm represents “the biggest leap forward in the past five years, and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search.”
Affecting one in ten searches, BERT gives Google a better understanding of how language is used and helps it comprehend the context of individual words within searches. The important thing to know about BERT (and also RankBrain), is the fact that you cannot optimize for it.
There's nothing to optimize for with BERT, nor anything for anyone to be rethinking. The fundamentals of us seeking to reward great content remain unchanged.
BERT is just one signal of how Google understands language, but it is one of the most important in the search engine’s arsenal. This means that now more than ever, webmasters and SEOs alike must focus their efforts on creating the most useful, natural, and highest-quality content. Quite simply, as Danny Sullivan says, “write content for users.”
It’s also worth understanding how BERT interprets questions, which you can find out more about in the Whiteboard Friday episode below.
Voice search is here to stay
It’s hard to imagine at the dawn of 2020, but when voice search was released in 2012 many assumed it would be just another project consigned to the ever-growing Google graveyard.
Today, however, we know so much more about the technology and, thanks to schema.org, where it is likely to go in the future. The adoption rate is slower than predicted, but it has nevertheless leaked into our lives, so we must not completely ignore voice search.
Schema markup
A new form of markup is released nearly every month, with one of the latest developments being markup for movies. Although this might seem insignificant, the fact that we are now seeing markup for films shows just how granular and far-reaching structured data has come.
With smart speakers now numbering 120 million in the US alone, webmasters should be taking the time to investigate where schema can be placed on their website so they can take advantage of the 35.6 million voice search demands taking place every month. What’s more, website markup has a monumental influence on featured snippets, which can be highly lucrative for any website. Take a look at this Moz guide for more information on how voice search influences featured snippets.
Speakable
If you’re in the US, it’s also worth noting that Speakable (BETA) is used by Google Assistant to answer people’s questions about specific topics. The assistant can return up to three relevant articles and provide audio playback using text-to-speech markup. Implementing such a markup can be highly lucrative for news sites, because when the assistant provides an answer, it also attributes the source and sends the full article URL to the user's mobile device. If you’re a news site that publishes in English but doesn’t yet have Speakable markup implemented, you can read up on both the technical considerations and content requirements necessary for eligibility.
Google Actions
Actions on Google, a development platform for Google Assistant, is also worth your consideration. It allows the third-party development of "actions" — applets for Google Assistant that provide extended functionality. Actions can be used to get things done by integrating your content and services with the Google Assistant.
Actions allow you to do a number of things:
Build Actions to ensure Google Assistant uses your apps
Allow users to search for and engage with your app
Provide your app as a recommendation for user queries
Check out this fantastic article by Andrea Vopini about how to optimize your content using Google assistant.
Google is heavily invested in using entities
Entities aren’t something that you hear SEOs talking about every day, but they are something Google is putting a lot of resources into. Put simply, Google itself states that entities are “a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined, and distinguishable.”
Entities don’t have to be something physical, but can be something as vague as an idea or a color. As long as it is either singular, unique, distinguishable, or well-defined, it is an entity.
As you can see, Moz shows up in the knowledge panel because the company is an entity. If you search the Google Knowledge Graph API for the company name, you can see how Google understands them:
But what does this mean for SEOs?
In 2015, Google submitted a patent named “Ranking Search Results Based On Entity Metrics,” which is where the above entity description is sourced from. Although few patents are worth getting excited about, this one caused a stir in the technical SEO scene because it takes machine learning to an entirely new level and allows Google to accurately calculate the probability of user intent, thus giving it an understanding of both user language and tone. What’s more, entities place a reduced reliance on links as a ranking factor, and depending on what your SEO strategy is, that could result in the need for big campaign changes.
The most important aspect you will need to consider is how Google understands the entities on your website.
For example, if your site sells shoes, you need to think about how many different types, colors, sizes, brands, and concepts exist for your shoes. Each shoe will represent a different entity, which means you must consider how to frame each product so that it meets the expectations of users as well as the learning capabilities of Google — which is where we meet markup once again.
Sites themselves can also become entities, and that provides huge rewards as they appear in the Knowledge Panel, which I will discuss next.
The knowledge panel will be important for personalities and brands
Although Google’s Knowledge Graph was launched way back in 2012, its expansion since then means it is still a core part of the search matrix and one that will reach far into the next decade.
Closely tied with featured snippets and rich results, earlier last year Google began allowing entities to claim their own knowledge panel, giving them access to edit and control the information presented to users in search results. They can make specific requests, such as changing the featured image, panel title, and social profiles provided within the panel.
The benefits of claiming your knowledge panel are numerous. They help users gain quick access to your site, which thanks to the Knowledge Graph, displays trust and authority signals. Knowledge panels also provide brands and personalities with the ability to control what objective information is shown to users. However, there are still many brands that have yet to claim their own panels.
You can claim your business’s knowledge panel in a few easy steps:
As you can see from the above examples, being in the Knowledge Graph can improve trust and add authenticity to your business or personal brand, as well as providing additional visibility. But it's easier said than done.
Unless you're a recognized, famous person or brand, claiming space in the Knowledge Graph is going to be difficult. Having a Wikipedia page can be enough, but I don't recommend creating pages just to get there — it will get deleted and waste your effort. Instead, build brand mentions and authority around your name gradually. While having a wikidata page can be helpful, it’s not guaranteed. The goal is to get Google to recognize you as a notable person or brand.
Queryless proactive predictive search is getting better
Google Discover was released in June of 2017, prompting a new kind of search altogether — one that is queryless. Discover is an AI-driven content recommendation tool and claims 80 million active users.
Using the aforementioned Knowledge Graph, Google added an extra layer called the Topic Layer, which is engineered to understand how a user’s interest develops over time (this article by the University of Maryland offers an in-depth explanation of topic layers and models).
By understanding the many topics a user is interested in, Discover identifies the most accurate content to deliver from an array of websites.
But what does this mean for SEOs?
To appear in Discover, Google states that pages appear “if they are indexed by Google and meet Google News content policies. No special tags or structured data are required.” It ranks content based on an algorithm that inspects the quality of content alongside the interests of the user and the topic of the page in question. The exact formula is unknown, however, based on several studies and experiments we now have a pretty good idea of how it works.
This screenshot from a presentation by Kenichi Suzuki highlights some of the factors that help pages appear in Discover.
According to Google, there are two ways to boost the performance of your content within Discover:
Post interesting content
Use high-quality images
As ever, ensure that you generate high quality content that is unique and creates a great experience for users. If your site tends to publish clickbait articles, the chance of those articles appearing in Discover is low.
Other tips for appearing in Discover would be to arrange your content semantically so that Google finds it easier to understand your work, and ensure that your website is technically proficient.
Like any form of search, you can use Google Search Console to see how well your articles are performing in Discover. You can find Discover stats under the performance section.
Google Discover analytics data is fairly new, and therefore limited. There isn't currently a native way to segment this traffic inside Google Analytics. To track user behavior data, this article provides a technique to track it inside Google Analytics.
We have yet to see the biggest changes in visual image Search
It could be argued that the biggest change to image search happened in September 2018 when Google Lens rolled out. Not only did featured videos begin appearing in image search, but AMP stories and new ranking algorithms and tags were also released.
But while speaking at a Webmaster Meetup in New York last year, John Mueller shared that there will be major changes in image search in the coming year. Rather than merely viewing images, very soon people will use itto accomplish goals, purchase products, and learn new information.
Google has always said that images should be properly optimized and marked, so if you have not started to add such data or information to your images, now is definitely the time to start.
In the past six months alone we have seen Google introduce small changes such as removing the “view image” function, as well as colossal changes, such as totally revamping image search for Desktop.
Furthermore, people don’t even have to search within it to see images anymore. It's common for the SERP to present a universal search result, which encompasses images, videos, maps, news, and shopping listings. The opportunity to appear in a universal (or blended) result is just another reason why properly tagged and marked images are so important.
Finally, Google has added visual image search attributes to search results. The interesting thing with this update is that these attributes are now available as image carousels within the main search results.
But what does this mean for SEOs?
With so much to play with, webmasters and SEOs should consider how they can take advantage of such changes, which could prove potentially very lucrative for the right sites — especially when you consider that 35% of Google product searches return transactions in as little as five days.
E-A-T doesn’t apply to every site — but it still matters
E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is something every SEO should know back to front, but remember:
E-A-T isn’t a ranking factor
E-A-T is critical for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) topics and pages
Although these two statements might seem contradictory, they make more sense when you consider what Google defines as YMYL.
According to Google’s Rater Guidelines, YMYL is a page or topic that “could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.” This means that if your page has information that could potentially change a person’s life, it is considered YMYL and offering E-A-T is important. If your site is merely your personal collection of cat pictures, then showcasing authority or expertise is less critical.
But what does this mean for SEOs?
The issue, however, is that the majority of websites (and certainly the ones invested in SEO) are generally going to have YMYL pages or topics, but Google is taking big steps to ensure that low quality or questionable YMYL content is weeded out. As you might know, you can’t optimize for E-A-T because it isn’t an algorithm, but you can implement changes to make sure your site sends the right kind of quality signals to Google. This Moz article by Ian Booth and this guide by Lily Ray offer great tips for how to do that.
Topics and semantics over keywords
Google is putting less priority on both links and keywords, which is where topic modeling and semantics come into the conversation.
Google has become very clever at understanding what a user is searching for based on just a few basic words. This is thanks, in part, to topic modeling (as Google itself admitted in September 2018 when it introduced its “topic layer”). Indeed, this algorithm has a deep understanding of semantics and yearns to provide users with deep troves of information.
But what does this mean for SEOs?
This means that it has never been more important to create high quality, in-depth, and meaningful content for users — but you also need to think about information structure.
For example, if your site sells running shoes, you could create long-form educational pieces about how to choose shoes for specific running environments, athletic diets for runners, or tech accessory reviews. These articles could then be clustered into various topics. By clustering your topics into compartments through your website architecture, both users and crawlers can easily navigate and understand the content provided.
Studies have also shown that Google’s crawlers prefer pages with semantic groupings and sites that are designed around topic modeling. This 2018 presentation by Dawn Anderson gives a brilliant insight into this. If you want to know more about topic modeling and semantic connectivity, check out this Whiteboard Friday by Rand Fishkin.
SERPs will continue to evolve
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen search results evolve and transform like never before. In fact, they have changed so much that, in some cases, being placed first within the organic search results may not be the most lucrative position.
This is something that would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago (check out this Moz article from 2018) that works to quell the panic from zero position SERPs).
With the introduction of Voice Search, rich results, rich snippets, knowledge panels, Google My Business, and updated Image Search results, SEOs now need to consider a whole new range of technical marketing strategies to appear in a multitude of organic search results.
It’s hard to know where Google is taking SERPs in the next year, but it is fair to say the strategies we use today for the search environment will likely be outdated in as little as six months.
Take, for example, the recent addition and subsequent removal of favicons in the SERPs; after backlash, Google reversed the change, proving we can never predict which changes will stick and which are blips on the radar.
But what does this mean for SEOs?
Ensure that your strategies are flexible and constantly prepare for changes in both your business sector (if you do not work within SEO) and the constantly evolving search environment. Pay attention to the seasonality of searches and use tools such as Google Trends to cover any out-of-season deficit that you may encounter.
You can use tools like Moz Keyword Explorer to help plan ahead and to create campaigns and strategies that provide useful traffic and lucrative conversions.
Conclusion
SEOs need to move away from the ideology that links and traditional search results should be priorities for an organic campaign. Although both still carry weight, without investment in technical strategy or willingness to learn about entities or semantic connectivity, no SEO campaign can reach its full potential.
The world of SEO in 2020 is bright and exciting, but it will require more investment and intelligent strategy than ever before.
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