On June 13, 2017, in Seattle, Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan sat down with Google's Gary Illyes to talk about all things Google. You can read live blog coverage from the session here. In this post, I've organized the content of this session into topical groups and added my own analysis. Note: The questions and answers appearing herein are not direct quotes. I am paraphrasing Sullivan's questions and Illyes' answers, as well as providing my interpretation of what was said(and including additional context where appropriate). I've also omitted some content from the session. The featured snippet discussionDannySullivan asked: Are we going to keep getting more featured snippets? Illyes has no idea about that, buthe notes that featured snippets are very important to Google. They want the quality to be really high, and one consideration people don't normally think about is that, in some cases (e.g., voice search results), the answers may be read out loud. Sullivan then asked about getting data on featured snippets in Search Console, and Illyes indicated that they had internally worked on a project to report on that, but its release was being blocked by Google higher-ups. (It was intriguing to get a glimpse of theinner workings at Google.Turns out, internal politics are an issue there- just like at any other company!) Illyes said that the basic way to get a feature like this released would be to convince Google management that it would help publishers create better content. From my point of view, I think Search Console data on featured snippets will do exactly that. Here is my reasoning:
Illyesfurther indicated that access to data on voice search may well be forthcoming soon, and that they are considering releasing something there. The goal would be to give people more insight on when their results show up in voice queries. Sullivan then asked if Google can stop the mix-and-match of content in featured snippets, where content is taken from one site and an image from another. Illyessaid that he doesn't think he can influence that in any way. But perhaps publishers should think about the base featured snippet as position 0A, and the image as position 0B. Accelerated Mobile Pages, mobile apps and Progressive Web AppsSullivan: What should people do: Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), mobile apps or Progressive Web Apps (PWA)? Illyes essentially said that which one you use depends upon what you want to do, and he noted that there is also something called PWAMPs, which is a combination of PWAand AMP. He pointedout that for some,native apps don't make sense. For example, Flipkart found that native apps did not work that well for them, so now they have built out a PWAMP and shifted over to that. What's cool about PWAs is that they have functionality that was only previously available to a native app, such as accessing phone hardware or push notifications. There is also a natural friction with native apps because you have to get people to install them, and that can be hard - after all, most users don't install any apps at all in a given month. With a PWA, the user simplyvisits your website, and they are already using it. Illyesfurther warned to be careful, because you can have your search visibility go to zero when you switch to a PWA if you don't pay careful attention to the SEO side of things. He also discussed AMP and indicated that it's just a stripped-down version of your content, designed to load far more quickly than a normal web page. If you're a news publication, and you want to monetize it, you want to use AMP. There are a ton of benefits to doing so. Access to the news carousel is one big aspect of that, but the overall speed of delivery matters a lot to users as well. As a publisher, you still retain full control over how you create it. Later in the Q&A, Illyesnotes that AMP is primarily interesting from a speed perspective, and if you can make your site really, really fast without AMP, then you may not need it. But overall, Illyesloves AMP, because it's really fast when it loads from the search results. He then reiterated what Google has said before, which is that you don't get any rankings boost for implementing AMP (unless you're lucky enough to be in the news space and get yourself into the AMP News Carousel). RankBrainSullivan: What's happening with RankBrain? Is this still used primarily for query refinement? Illyes explained that RankBrain allows Google to better understand what would be the best result for the user's query, based on historical data. It's currently live in all languages. There is no plan to change it or launch new things into it, as the team is busy working on other things. They are looking at other ways to use machine learning in search, but they are nowhere near launching something new in this area. Mysummary of what RankBrain does:To be clear, this is my interpretation of what I've heard in several public Google conversations about the topic and therefore does not represent Google's statements on the matter. But it tracks pretty precisely to what Gary Illyes told me at a conference last yearand what he said at SMX Advanced this year. Here's my summary in one sentence: RankBrain leverages the historical performance of essentially, or nearly, identical queries, to see what worked and what didn't, and then leverages that information to adjust and improve the delivered results for the current query. In more detail, RankBrain compares the user's query with other historical queries of a similar nature. This is where the machine learning comes in, because they use it to identify historical queries that are the most similar to those Google has already responded to. In machine learning-speak, this is done in high-dimensional vector space. This is then used to see how those historical queries performed. By looking at multiple queries, Google can find out what types of results performed well and which ones did not. That information is then used to tweak the results that came back from the regular Google algorithms for the new query, and in some cases it may even change what algorithms get invoked to address the query. The reason RankBrain has the biggest impact in the long tail of search is because that's where the value of this comparison is so high. For head term queries like digital cameras, the core algorithms already work extremely well. But for rare queries, leveraging the data from other past similar queries can be quite valuable. Weak ranking signalsSullivan:Do you get a ranking boost if you implement HTTPS? Illyes confirmed that yes, the ranking boost for HTTPS is still there - and there are no plans to update it. The boost has not increased from its original implementation. It may increase at some point in the future, but there are no current plans. In my view,the HTTPS ranking boost is like the voting power of the Vice President of the US in the US Senate.If the vote is stuck at a stalemate, the VP casts the tie-breaking vote. This has only happened 258 times in the historyof the US (and 25 times in the past 50 years), so it's pretty rare. In other words, it's a really weak signal. Sullivan:What is the impact of page speed on search engine rankings? Page speed already is a ranking factor, but Illyes noted that the algorithm currently looks at the desktop version of a page when taking this into account. Google is working to fix that, and Illyes has assured us that theywill be quite loud about it when they do: They will blog about it, tweet about it and so on. They want people to make sites fast. However, the ranking boost from page speed will be comparable to the HTTPS ranking boost, which is more like a tiebreaker. Miscellaneous questions of interestSullivan:What's up with Fred(a recent, unconfirmed ranking algorithm update)? Illyessaid he can't talk about it. The material info in this discussion is a reminder that Google does updates nearly every day and that he is not at liberty to discuss most of them. Fred was just a basic quality update, closely related to the quality section of the Webmaster Guidelines. He also noted that a lot of people make noise when their sites take a hit, but few make any commentary when they recover. Google's policy does include talking about major updates, however. Sullivannoted that the last update Google discussed was the one to address both fake news and some of the featured snippet quality problems. You can read more about that here. Sullivan:You said over-optimization can hurt you, but in the past, you said it couldn't. Which is it? Illyes clarified that it's a matter of degree. If you tend to put too many keywords in your content, but it's not really egregious, Google will probably ignore it. But if you really push the limits, at some point, it's probably going to be considered spammy. Sullivan:Are there issues when you switch your site from non-secure to secure? It depends on the size of your site. Illyesknew of quite a few media sites that had changed in the last few months. He recommended to them that they switch their site in sections, because it gives you damage control if you need it. Only one had a major problem. Also, in the past, Google had signals in their algorithm that were sensitive to whether or not a site is HTTPSor HTTP, but these have all been fixed (except of course, the rankings boost). In an important sidebar, Illyesalso discussed how long it would take to recover from a more complex move, if you did indeed see an impact. He said that the HTTPSteam wants to say two weeks, but if there are a lot of URLs that are crawled rarely, that it could take three months, or even more. If you're doing something like moving domains, you can use the site move tool in Search Console, of course. Lightning roundHere are some audience questions that Gary Illyes fielded during the keynote conversation, most of which have brief answers. Question:Is Hreflang a fake tag? It does work. Illyesdeveloped it, and it does what he said it does. Question:Does responsive web design have a higher opportunity to rank? Illyes says no. Google recommends responsive web design because it makes maintaining your sites easier. For example, it's easier for webmasters to keep their schema in place. Question:Does Google adapt its crawling of lower network speeds for mobile, such as 3G? There is no change in how it works. Question:How important is schema for an e-commerce site? It's very important. Question:How do you handle bad linking practices? Google will normally just ignore bad links, as perthe real-time version of Penguin that was recently released. Illyesnoted that people pushed Google hard to switch to that method for handling bad links (devaluing them rather than penalizing them), but as soon as they did, others started asking why Google didn't penalize these sites. However, he also said that Google does still send out manual action emails, though they tend to not be as harsh as they used to be. Also, if you are buying links, it's extremely likely that you're throwing money out the window. Question:What are the top things to think about? Here, Illyesgave a list:
That's a wrap! The post What I learned from the Danny Sullivan/Gary Illyes keynote at SMX Advanced appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Welcome to the newest installment of our educational Next Level series! In our last episode, Brian Childs shared a few handy shortcuts for targeting multiple keywords with one page. Today, he's back to share how to use Google Analytics to measure the SEO impact of your content. Read on and level up! Understanding how to write web content for SEO is important. But equally important is knowing how to measure the SEO impact of your content after it's published. In this article I'll describe how to use Google Analytics to create reports that evaluate the performance of articles or the writers creating those articles. Let's start with some definitions. What is SEO content?Search engine optimized content is the strategic process of researching and writing website copy with the goal of maximizing its impact in the SERPs. This requires having a keyword strategy, the ability to conduct competitive analyses, and knowledge of current ranking factors. If you're a copywriter, you've likely already been asked by your clients to create content written for SEO. Translating this into action often means the writer needs to have a greater role in both strategy and research. Words matter in SEO, and spending the time to get them right is a big part of creating content effectively. Adding SEO research and analysis to the process of researching content often fits nicely. So the question is: How do I measure the effectiveness of my content team? We go in greater depth on the research and reporting processes during the Moz seminar SEO for Content Writers, but I'll explain a few useful concepts here. What should I measure?Well-defined goals are at the heart of any good digital marketing strategy, whether you're doing SEO or PPC. Goals will differ by client and I've found that part of my role as a digital marketer is to help the client understand how to articulate the business goals into measurable actions taken by visitors on their site. Ideally, goals have a few essential traits. They should:
Broad goals such as increase organic sessions on site are rarely specific enough for clients to want to invest in after the first 36 months of a relationship. One tool you can use to measure goals is Google Analytics (GA). The nice part about GA is that almost everyone has an account (even if they don't know how to use it) and it integrates nicely with almost all major SEO software platforms. Lay the foundation for your SEO research by taking a free trial of Moz Pro. After you've researched your content strategy and competition with Keyword Explorer and Open Site Explorer, you can begin measuring the content you create in Google Analytics. Let me show you how I set this up. How to measure SEO content using Google AnalyticsStep 1: Review conversion actions on siteAs I mentioned before, your SEO goals should tie to a business outcome. We discuss setting up goals, including a worksheet that shows monthly performance, during the Reporting on SEO Bootcamp. During the launch phase of a new project, locate the on-site actions that contribute to your client's business and then consider how your content can drive traffic to those pages. Some articles have CTAs pointing to a whitepaper; others may suggest setting up a consultation. When interviewing your client about these potential conversion locations (contact us page, whitepaper download, etc), ask them about the value of a new customer or lead. For nonprofits, maybe the objective is to increase awareness of events or increase donations. Regardless of the goal, it's important that you define a value for each conversion before creating goals in Google Analytics. Step 2: Navigate to the Admin panel in Google AnalyticsOnce you have goals identified and have settled on an acceptable value for that goal, open up Google Analytics and navigate to the admin panel. At the time of writing this, you can find the Admin panel by clicking on a little gear icon at the bottom-left corner of the screen.
Step 3: Create a goal (including dollar value)There are three columns in the Admin view: Account, Property, and View. In the View column, you will see a section marked Goals.
Once you are in Goals, select +New Goal. I usually select Custom rather than the pre-filled templates. It's up to you. I'd give the Custom option a spin just to familiarize yourself with the selectors. Now fill out the goal based on the analysis conducted in step #1. One goal should be filled out for each conversion action you've identified. The most important factor is filling out a value. This is the dollar amount for this goal.
The Google description of how to create goals is located here: Create or Edit Goals Step 4: Create and apply a Segment for Organic TrafficOnce you have your goals set up, you'll want to set up and automate reporting. Since we're analyzing traffic from search engines, we want to isolate only traffic coming from the Organic Channel. Organic traffic = people who arrive on your site after clicking on a link from a search engine results page. An easy way to isolate traffic of a certain type or from a certain source is to create a segment. Navigate to any Google Analytics page in the reports section. You will see some boxes near the top of the page, one of them labeled All Users (assuming segments haven't been configured in the past). Select the box that says "All Users and it will open up a list with checkboxes.
Scroll down until you find the checkbox that says Organic Traffic, then select and apply that. Now no matter what reports you look at In Google Analytics, you'll only be viewing the traffic from search engines.
Step 5: Review the Google Analytics Landing Page ReportNow that we've isolated only traffic from search engines using a Google Analytics Segment, we can view our content performance and assess what is delivering the most favorable metrics. There are several reports you can use, but I prefer the Landing Pages report. It shows you the page where a visitor begins their session. If I want to measure blog writers, I want to know whose writing is generating the most traffic for me. The Landing Pages report will help do that. To get to the Landing Pages report in Google Analytics, select this sequence of subheadings on the left sidebar: Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages
This report will show you, for any period of time, which pages are delivering the most visits. I suggest going deeper and sorting the content by the columns Pages per session and Session Duration. Identify the articles that are generating the highest average page depth and longest average session duration. Google will see these behaviors and signal that you're delivering value to your visitors. That is good for SEO. Step 6: Review the conversion value of your writersRemember those goals we created? In the far right columns of the Landing Pages report, you will find the value being delivered by each page on your site. This is where you can help answer the question, Which article topics or writers are consistently delivering the most business value?
If you want to share this report with your team to help increase transparency, I recommend navigating up to the top of the page and, just beneath the name of the report, you'll see a link called Email. Automate your reporting by setting up an email that delivers either a .csv file or PDF on a monthly basis. It's super easy and will save you a ton of time. Want to learn more SEO content tips?If you find this kind of step-by-step process helpful, consider joining Moz for our online training course focused on SEO for copywriters. You can find the upcoming class schedule here: Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! I've now been living with the Echo Show for several weeks. It has supplanted my originalAmazon Echo in the kitchen. I find itboth more excitingand more frustrating than the original. The screen adds a compelling new element but creates expectations that are not fully realized- as though Amazon is ambivalent or uncertain how far to take the screen as a parallel way of controlling and navigating content. The screen makes things more complicated, even as it makes the device more interesting and useful. It opensa door to a much larger set of use cases, including a much more obvious commerce opportunity. (It's not clear whether Amazon's rivals will follow and add screens to their devices. If the Showis a runaway hit, I suspect they will.) Creates tablet-like expectationsImmediately for me, the Echo Show'sscreen created UX expectations associated with a tablet. I wantedto touch it and get menus and navigation. I wanted to browse and search for things usingthe screen. I wanted to see lists of available Skills. With a couple of exceptions, you can't do any of these things. Some consider this design restraint, but I wanted the screen to do more and operatemore intuitively. Ultimately, Amazon will have to determine how far it wants to enable screen-first (as opposed to voice-first) experiences for the Show. For example, you can say, Show me what you can do. The device then produces alist on screen: set an alarm, show PrimeTV shows, find songs by Lisa Loeband so on. But none of the items on this listare touchable or clickable. Youcan't touch Prime TV and access a menu of available shows.You have to query the device by voice: Alexa, show me Transparent from Amazon Prime Video. I think the Show should be more agnostic about how users get to content. I suspect that as Amazon sees how people engage with it, over time the screen's capabilities and functionality will grow. Design is basic, sound is better than EchoSome have foundthe trapezoidal design of the Show uninspired. I'm not bothered by it, although it is utilitarian (and eerily evocative of OrwellianTelescreens from 1984). Thesound quality on the Echo Show is better than the original Echo. Thus,if you were to buy only one Alexa device, the Show would bemy recommendation. But theShow costs$230, while the Echo is $179 and the Dot is $49. As recent survey datafrom NPR and Edison research revealed, many people who've declined to purchase a smart speaker are holding back because of cost. Amazon has wisely diversified its lineupto offer a range of price points and capabilities accordingly. The Echo Show screen also enablesAmazon to more effectively promptand educate users about itscapabilities and what's new. This is a hugeadvantage over the conventional Echo, which relies on weekly email updates, which I don't read, to inform users of new Skills or capabilities. Yet there appears to beno way to turn off the home screen messages. It's pretty clear that Amazon is laying the groundwork for offers or ads, should the companygo down that path. Indeed, it may eventually offer a subsidized Show with special offers and a more expensive one without, as it does with other devices it sells. Right now thereare almost no Skillsadapted for thescreen. Thatwill probably changequickly; in fact, Brightcove just launched a program to help developers bring video to their Skillsfor the new device. It's hard to overstate the nature of the visual opportunity for developers and brands on the Show. A big new commerce opportunityTravel and commerce apps, for example, will benefit from the ability to visually present multiple optionsto end users, which will soon drive transactions. Youcan scroll, for example, through multiple Amazon products ornearby businesses featuring Yelp ratings. Even in theirembryonic form, these changes represent a dramatic upgrade vs. the voice-only Alexa devices. And should Amazon eventually allow it, developers couldinsert ads into their Skills. The video-calling feature works well, provided the other party has the Alexa app on a device or another Show. Hopefully video calling will integrate with third-party apps and services. Amazon would be wise to allow that to happen. As an illustration of how different the Echo and Show are, here's a non-exhaustive list of things you can do with Echo Showbecause of the screen:
TheShow is a compelling,albeit imperfect, addition to the Alexa device lineup. I would just like to see Amazon more fully embrace thescreen - perhaps not turn it into a full-blown tablet, but something more touch-friendly than it is today. The post Amazon's Echo Show is a '1.0' device, both exciting and frustrating appeared first on Search Engine Land. The Google Search Console seems to have a bug in their Search Analytics report, specifically with the average position metric. Many webmasters are claiming the average position metric in the search analytics report has taken a sharp dive since July 13. I have seen dozens of screen shots from webmasters showing proof of this decline, and I am able to personally replicate this in most of the Google Search Console profiles I have access to. Here is a screen shot of the green line significantly dropping down; the green line represents the average position data: So do not panic, many are seeing the same issue. We are trying to get confirmation from Google about this possible bug in the Google Search Console. The post Google Search Console may have a bug with the average position metric appeared first on Search Engine Land. There are millions of people on Pinterest, searching, pinning, and sharing so it's important to recognize its potential for building awareness and filling the top of the funnel, particularly for ecommerce companies. This blog will discuss a couple of recommended targeting types within Pinterest to help fill the top of the funnel and essentially build up your audience. From there, once your audience is built out, we'll run through how to actually capitalize on these new users to drive sales. Let's jump in. Use Pinterest to fill the funnelPinterest has some specific features that are highly effective for building your audience. These include: Keyword targetingYou can leverage user intent by targeting specific keywords that usersare searching within Pinterest. For example, if you are a trendy clothing brand that sells sweaters, you may want to target trendy sweaters and have your ad (in Pinterest lingo, your promoted pin) show up in the search results and related pins. Interest targetingPinterest will determine a user's interest based on the pins they have engaged with and saved. Your ad (promoted pin) will show up in the user's home feed or relevant topics feed. A Promoted Pin on Pinterest Actalike targetingThis is similar to Facebook's lookalike targeting; you can upload a customer list and Pinterest will target audiences similar in behaviors, traits, and characteristics as that customer list. Our recommendation is to start off with your top customers for example, your highest-LTV or AOV audiences. I would initially recommend prioritizing the Actalike and keyword targeting as they tend to be more effective at getting in front of highly relevant audiences. But by leveraging any or all of the targeting options, you're discovering and engaging with new, relevant audiences and driving them to your site. That said, make sure your expectations are aligned. You should not expect to see Pinterest as a lever for immediate purchases, but more as a longer-term play where you're developing an awareness and building your audience to hit later via a few different methods below to actually drive the sale. That said, let's talk about how to Convert Pinterest engagement into salesNow that you've engaged with your audiences via Pinterest, you should be capturing those audiences for remarketing purposes. First, to be smart with your remarketing efforts and truly understand the value of Pinterest, you should make sure every link on your Pinterest ads include a tag that labels it as Pinterest. You can use UTMparameters or anything else, but essentially you want to make sure that you can identify these audiences that have come through from Pinterest and segment them out. You can then create specific audiences within both Google and Facebook (for example) that have come in through Pinterest. (E.g. url contains 'utm_source=pinterest). Now you can separate out these audiences, and as you usethem in your retargeting strategies, you can understand if the Pinterest audiences you have built are actually converting into sales. Speaking of converting, I'd recommend the following methods: RLSA (remarketing for search ads)Layer your Pinterest audiences onto existing search campaigns and add a higher bid modifier. These audiences have already visited your site and developed a familiarity with your brand. If they end up searching for your product, you want to make sure your ad appears high in the search results to remind them of your brand, pull them to your site, and entice them to convert. One RLSA strategy I'd recommend is to create a separate broad RLSA campaign where you can bid on head terms, and broader but still relevant terms that you normally wouldn't be able to afford. For example, you typically may not bid on a term like womens clothing because it is so generic and has heavy competition, but given the user has already visited your site, you can create an RLSA campaign, layer your Pinterest audiences, and bid on the term. The thought behind this is that by serving your ad on this more generic keyword, you are reminding them that you sell women's clothing. Since the users have been to your site, they'll have a sense of if it's worth visiting. Essentially, this is way of getting in front of relevant eyes without doing significant harm to overall efficiency. Dynamic remarketingYou can do this on both Facebook and GDN where ads include the product the user has visited on the site (as well as other relevant products). The usual segmentation caveats apply; you want to make sure you're segmenting by time lapsed since the visit and depth of site pages reached and bid accordingly. Remarketing for shoppingMake use ofyour audience list by layering it onto your shopping campaigns. Again, the goal here is to bid more aggressively so you can ensure your ad shows up for the audiences who have engaged with your Pinterest ad, visited the site, and developed familiarity with the brand. You'll typically see higher CVRs for these types of audiences. The main takeaway here: if you're not investing in Pinterest, you're missing out on engaging a robust, potentially high-ROI audience. The platform itself has come a long way in adding marketing-friendly features and reporting capabilities to position itself as a long-term player. Get on board now; the traffic's not getting any cheaper. Good luck! For more on how to integrate Pinterest into your sales strategy, check out our visual guide to Pinterest advertising. Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land:
Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:
Search News From Around The Web:Local & Maps Searching SEO
SEM / Paid Search
Search Marketing
The post SearchCap: Google Search Console beta, Amazon Echo Show & link building mistakes appeared first on Search Engine Land. best health insurance for self employed 2017best health insurance for self employed 2017best health insurance for self employed 2017best health insurance for self employed 2017best health insurance for self employed 2017best health insurance for self employed 2017
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land:
Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:
Search News From Around The Web:Industry
Local & Maps
Link Building
Searching
SEO
SEM / Paid Search
Search Marketing The post SearchCap: Google home service ads, Google Image SEO & link building appeared first on Search Engine Land. Google is currently testing a new design and user interface for the Google Search Console. The new user interface takes a design look from the revised mobile-friendly testing tool that launched less than a year ago. It seems Google has been beta testing this new user interface for some time and now is starting to slowly roll this out to some users. Alan Bleiweiss is part of this beta test and he emailed me several screen shots of the new design and user interface. Here are those screen shots: The post Google beta testing brand-new Google Search Console design appeared first on Search Engine Land. The combination of semantics (the science of meaning in language) with search engines that process billions of queries seems a very natural one. Semantic search has been effective, too; by understanding the intent of a query and the context of the user, the accuracy of results on search engines like Google and Bing has increased significantly. Search engine results pages today look markedly different to their earlier iterations and, with improvements in local search, voice recognition, and machine learning, they will continue to change over the next few years too. There is a lot of fascinating theory behind all of this, but we can sometimes focus on this to the detriment of our work today. Significant algorithm updates like Hummingbird, or the more recent launch of RankBrain, have a big impact on users. As marketers, we need to know exactly what this means for our strategy, our expectations, and our campaign measurement. As such, this article will focus on some real-world examples of semantic search and provide a practical framework to help marketers avail of the opportunities it brings. Semantic search in actionLet's start with a simple example to shed light on how semantic search works. We'll use a common, everyday search query like [will smith]. This screenshot is what I see above the fold on desktop: When Google processes this query, it recognizes instantaneously that I am searching for the actor and all-round entertainer Will Smith, but also that the intent of my search is unclear. Therefore, it serves a varied array of options for me to click on. I may want to read news about the Fresh Prince, I may want to see his filmography, I may want to see if he has any new albums in the pipeline. Perhaps I want to see all three. As is highlighted on the right-hand side in the knowledge panel, Google can retrieve all of this information from its index of 808,000,000 Will Smith-related results, but also from its own vast database of information about noteworthy people and institutions. I can help Google out here by refining my search. Next, I ask [who is he married to]: As we can see, results are pulled to the top of the results to highlight his current and former spouse. This is a demonstration of conversational search in action. Just like a person would in a conversation, Google knows the 'he' in my question refers to Will Smith. I don't need to state this again. Google also needs to know what the connection is between 'he' and both Jada Pinkett Smith and Sheree Zampino. These may seem like minor changes, but they hint at a fundamental shift in how Google works. Factor in voice search and it is easy to see how important this conversational element is. If we extend this out to ask about Will Smith's music, we can start to conceptualize just how complex Google's network of interconnected entities is: Asking what an artist's best song is strays into the realm of subjectivity, so Google pulls the track listing from Will Smith's greatest hits. Or at least, I hope that's what's happening here. If Google genuinely thinks 'Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble' is Will Smith's best song, I'll lose faith in them. In terms of natural language processing, however, this search query is now quite convoluted. In this last instance, Google has had to keep track of who we're asking about, having deviated once already to ask who his spouse is; then pull an indirect, best-fit answer to my question about Will Smith's best song. Let's try one more, then we'll give Google a break: You get the idea. We've come an awfully long way from the exact keyword matching of just a few years ago. Furthermore, all of this serves an important illustrative purpose and it's one that matters for anyone that wants to rank via SEO in 2017. Why does it matter for brands?The technology that underpins the above answers is utilized for all queries, so it is very significant for brands. Just launching a page on a website and 'optimizing it for SEO' clearly isn't going to cut it any more. Let's say, for argument's sake, that I run a peanut butter e-commerce site. Logic dictates that I will want to rank first in organic search for [peanut butter]. The results from my location look like this: We can see the same principle applied to the earlier Will Smith query, but with very different results both in their format and their content. I may want to rank for [peanut butter] with my e-commerce site, but unless I have a physical store I can use to rank via local listings, the chances look slim. There are a few organic results above the fold (an anomaly these days), but only one brand that actually produces the product. There is a recipe with an accompanying image, however, and a link to more images, so perhaps these formats would be a more appropriate, achievable way to get onto page one. At the bottom of this search results page, Google actually provides some strong clues about what people are really looking for when they search for peanut butter: These related searches are more specific and give us a good idea of which topics we should cover on our site. There is a nice variety of different topics here, all of which are worthy of more investigation. To pick one, we'll go with the 'peanut butter ingredients' route. If I search for [what is in peanut butter?], Google serves the following results: We can already sense some opportunities for an e-commerce site either to branch out is content strategy to answer questions, or potentially to partner with a site that already ranks well for these queries. The 'People also ask' list is a fantastic resource for users and SEO marketers, but we should be aware of just how dynamic that list is. It take on a concertina effect and expands based on our interactions with it. Once more, the need to approach SEO in 2017 with an open mind is evident. We can't control how this list will function at scale; all we can do is put ourselves in the best possible position to answer common questions. In the screenshot below, there are two examples of how the list changes based on the questions a user clicks on. On the left-hand side, I have clicked on a protein-related question and, therefore, Google provides more protein-based questions below the original list of four. On the right-hand side, I have initially clicked on 'Is eating peanut butter good for you?' The 'People also ask' box ends up looking completely different in these two instances, which both began with the exact same query. Note that a lot of similar questions are phrased slightly differently, but Google knows that the underlying meaning is essentially the same. As such, we don't need to slavishly devote ourselves to answering the exact questions that receive the most searches in order to rank. This brings with it opportunities and challenges, outlined in the four-step process below. Four steps to rank via semantic searchWe can't control exactly which queries we will rank for, but we can certainly increase the probability that we will improve our organic visibility if we work through these four stages. ResearchGoogle provides a lot of useful information via suggested search, 'People Also Ask', and related searches. You could use these to collect a list of direct questions that you can be certain people are asking, as a starting point. Although keyword-level search volumes are impossible to obtain with any serious degree of accuracy now, there are still some useful tools that provide insight into search trends. Google's own keyword planner is quite limited for SEO nowadays, but you can use PPC-based insights to help shape your content strategy. There are also tools like Moz's keyword planner, which are very helpful for shaping broader SEO strategies while still keeping an eye on where the search volume is. Personally, I find Answer the Public to be a useful guide when trying to figure out all the interrelated questions and pain points consumers have when thinking about a product or service. Collate a list of all the navigational, informational, and commercial queries related to your site, then sub-categorize them by their semantic links to each other. From here, you can start thinking about how to structure this to ensure maximum SEO visibility. StructureSite structure is a fundamental aspect of semantic search performance. You should think of your products or services as entities that each contain a multitude of connotations and associations. Build those connotations in vertically to cover a range of user needs, and link them to other entities horizontally in the site taxonomy. By mapping keyword groups or common questions to landing pages, you can ensure that each URL on your domain has a defined purpose. Changes to site structure normally require buy-in from multiple stakeholders, so I would advise visualizing your proposed site taxonomy as early as possible. How you present this will depend on your intended audience and how they think. For more logical thinkers, Writemaps is a great way to produce simple but effective site structure visualizations. If you require a more conceptual approach to emphasize semantic relationships, or even the amount of internal link value you want to send to each area of the site, you can use word cluster software like Smartdraw to get your point across. ImplementThe next step is to populate your site structure with content that meets user needs. This is an effective way to think about this, because consumer needs and desires remain relatively constant, and the ideal functioning of a search engine will always seek to satiate those underlying motivations. So if you can create content to cover every aspect of the typical consumer journey, you will be rewarded. Bear in mind what we have seen from the example above, too. Multimedia results are hugely significant, so try to include a range of assets that fit users' (and Google's) expectations. Most rank tracking software providers now contain products that allow us to see which types are most prevalent for different types of queries, so use these to guide your efforts. MeasureMeasurement has become a significant challenge, viewed through the lens of our old performance indicators like ranking positions, for example. It is very difficult to track individual ranking positions, as they are never static. Search results pages act like living organisms now, so we need to take a broader perspective on measurement. Track the metrics that matter most to your business, rather than just looking at rankings. The aim should always be to use SEO to affect those metrics anyway, so incorporate them within your campaign tracking. Moreover, the bigger ranking software companies have created their own metrics to measure SEO visibility which, when combined with what you see in your analytics dashboard, will provide a lot of insight into whether your strategy is working. We can't approach measurement like we used to, but we can still tell when SEO is making a positive contribution. For more on semantic search and its ever-changing impact on the SERP, check out our round-up of five important updates to Google semantic search you might have missed. |