Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

It's brilliant. Those individuals are searching for something to reference,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

to maybe link to, to include in a presentation or an article, whatever that might be.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

It has this basic link intent.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Another thing you want to evaluate is just anything around images.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Do any of your keywords and pictures or photos, etc., have good search volume with some opportunities?


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

What does that search result currently look like?


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You have to evaluate what's currently ranking to understand what's working and what's not.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I used to say at my old agency, I didn't want anyone writing any piece of content


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

until they had read all of the 10 search results for that keyword or that phrase we were targeting.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Why would you do that until you have a full understanding of how that looks currently


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

and how we can make something way better?


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Rand had also mentioned this really cool tip on if you find some keywords,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

it's good to evaluate whether or not the image carousel shows up for those searches.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

If it does, that's a little glimpse into the searcher intent that leads to images.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

That's a good sign that you're on the right track to really optimize for a certain image.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Something to keep in mind.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

From here, we're going to move up to providing value.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Now we're in the brainstorming stage.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Hopefully you've gotten some ideas, you know where you want to link from,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

and you need to provide value in some way.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

It could be a reference, maybe something that people would bookmark.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

That always works.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Perspective is a really interesting one.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Some of the most beautiful data visualizations do this extremely well,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

where they can simplify a confusing concept or a lot of data.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

It's a great way to leverage images and graphics.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Printouts still work really well.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Moz has the SEO Dev cheat sheet that I have seen printed all over at different agencies,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

and that's really neat to see it adding value directly.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You can also curate images.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

We see this a lot with different articles.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Maybe the top 25 to 50 images from this trade show or this event or whatever it might be,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

that's a great way to leverage link building and getting people fired up about a curated piece of content.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Gregory Ciati has an incredible article I suggest you all read called


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Why a Visual Really is Worth a Thousand Words, and he mentions,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Don't be afraid to get obvious.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I love that because I think all too often we tend to overthink images and executing things in general,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

and why not just state the obvious and see how it goes.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

He's got great examples.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

From here, we are going to move into optimization.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

If any of you need a brush up on image optimization,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I highly suggest you check out Ram's Whiteboard Friday on Image SEO.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

It covers everything, but some of the basics are your title.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You want to make sure that the title of the image has your keyword


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

and explains what it is that you're trying to convey.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

From there, you need to have alt text.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

This was first and foremost designed for the visually impaired.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You need to be mindful of visually impaired readers that will read this to people


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

to explain what the image actually is.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

First and foremost, you just need to be helpful and provide information


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

in a descriptive way to describe that image.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Compression is huge.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Page speed is so big right now.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I hear about it all the time.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I know you guys do too.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

One of the easiest ways to help page speed is to compress those huge images.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

There's a ton of great free tools out there like Optimize Zilla,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

where you can bulk upload a bunch of large images and then bulk download.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

It makes it super easy.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

There's also some desktop programs, if you're doing this kind of stuff all the time,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

that will automatically compress images you download or save.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

That might be worth looking into if you do this a lot.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You want to host the image.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You want it to live on your domain.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You want to house that.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You can leverage it on other platforms,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

but you want that original to be on your site.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Source set attribute is getting a little technical.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

It's super interesting.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

It's basically this really incredible image attribute that allows you to set


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

the minimum browser size and the image you would prefer to show up for different sizes.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You can not only have different images show up for different devices and different sizes,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

but you can also revamp them.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You can revamp the same image and serve it better for a mobile user versus a tablet, etc.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

John Henshaw has some of the greatest stuff on source set.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I highly suggest you look at some of his articles.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

He's doing really cool things with it.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Check that out.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

From here, you want to promote your images.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You obviously want to share it on popular platforms.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You want to reach back out to some of these things that you might have tapped into earlier.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

If you updated a piece of content, make them aware of that.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Or if you transformed a really popular piece of content into some visuals,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

you might want to share that with the person who is sharing that piece of content.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You want to start to tap into that previous research with your promotion.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Inform the influencers.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Ask people to share it.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

There is nothing wrong with just asking your network of people to share something you've worked really hard on.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Hopefully, vice versa, that can work in return.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You're not afraid to share something a connection of yours has that they worked really hard on.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

From here, you need to monitor.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

One of the best ways to do this is Google reverse image search.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

If you go to Google and you click the images,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

there's that little camera icon that you can click on and upload images


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

to see where else they live on the web.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

This is a great way to figure out who is using your image, where it's being held,


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

are you getting a backlink, are you not, you want to keep an eye on all that stuff.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Two other tools to do this that I've heard about is ImageRader and TinEye.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

But I have not had great experience with either of these.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I would love to hear your comments below if maybe you have.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Reverse image search with Google works the best for me.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

This is also an awesome opportunity for someone to get on the market


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

and create a Google alert for images.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I don't think anyone's actually doing that right now.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

If you know someone that is, please let me know down below in the comments.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

But it could be a cool business opportunity, right?


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

So for monitoring, let's say you find your image is being used on different websites.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Now you need to do some basic outreach to get that link.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You want to request that link for using your image.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

This is just a super basic template that I came up with.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

You can use it, you can change it, do whatever you want, but it's just high first name.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Thank you so much for including our image in your article.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Great piece.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Just wondering if you could link to us.com as the source.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Thanks, Brittany.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Something like that, right?


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

Something short to the point.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

If you can make it more personalized, please do so.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I can't stress that enough.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

People will take you way more seriously if you have some nugget of personal information


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

or connection that you can make.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

From there, you just sort of stay in this loop.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

After you go through this process, you need to continue to promote your content and continue


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

to monitor and do outreach and push that to maximize your link building efforts.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I hope you enjoyed this.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I look forward to hearing all of your comments and thoughts down below in the comments.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday

I look forward to seeing you all later.


Image Link Building - Whiteboard Friday


Taking the Top Spot: How to Earn More Featured Snippets Presented by Rob Bucci

Hi, my name is Rob Bucci.


I am a margarita maker.


I'm more than a margarita maker.


I'm the founder and CEO of Stat Search Analytics.


And I'm here today to give you guys some insight into the opportunities you have with Google


featured snippets.


People call them answers boxes.


I call them featured snippets, but it's up to you.


The point is that I want to give you an understanding of the opportunities that are in front of


you.


I want you to walk away from this talk feeling excited about the things that you can do to


get your own featured snippets.


So we'll talk about the opportunities and we'll also talk about how to take advantage


of those opportunities.


If you want to heckle me, don't do it in person.


Do it on Twitter.


You can get me on Stat Rob.


Use MozCon as the hashtag so everyone can join in.


This is my favorite featured snippet.


And you can guess why.


It's because Google is the biggest scraper in the world.


This is an example of a paragraph featured snippet.


Featured snippets are a super interesting phenomenon.


For the first time, you have this opportunity to break out of the organic pack and elevate


yourself above the crowd.


Google is actually taking the content from your website and they're putting a giant box


around you and they're saying this.


This is the best content in the entire world for the question you're asking right now.


Think about what that does to the mind of the searcher.


It creates the sense of instant credibility, instant authority.


Studies are showing us that on-page conversion rates are spiking after people are hitting


your site from the featured snippet.


People are more likely to pick up what you're putting down when they see you in the featured


snippet because they trust you more.


That opportunity is massive and we're really excited about it.


At Stat, we're a group of curious people and we do a lot of research.


And that's how we like to give people advice.


It's not sort of like, how do I feel today?


I think I'm going to offer this sort of advice.


It's usually advice that's based on data.


And in keeping with that trend, what we did was a massive research project.


In January, we took one million keywords and we analyzed the SERPs.


We went to Google.com desktop device, we grabbed those SERPs, we looked for the presence of


a featured snippet.


And when we found one, we dove right into it.


And we got really deep into those SERPs where we saw the snippets and we did a lot of very


interesting analysis there.


The cool part is that I just refreshed this data in July with the help of my team.


And no one's ever seen this data before.


You guys are the first people in the entire world have seen any of this research that's


come out of our company in the July refresh.


And what's cool about that is I have this opportunity now to draw some conclusions from


the way I see that data trend.


Here's where it was in January, here's where it is in July, how are things different, and


maybe where might they be going?


What opportunities are present in those changes over a six or seven month period?


To set the lay of the land, let's talk about snippet occurrence.


By the way, my talk is super data heavy, so like hold on tight.


We're going to get through this together.


We're seeing more snippets than ever.


We crawled a million keywords.


That's no small feat, but not hard for us to do.


We looked and we saw 9% of them had snippets on them.


That was in January.


In July, 15%, 67% increase over six months.


So all of a sudden, snippets are on more queries than ever before.


And well, whoops, there we go.


They're worth more than ever before.


This chart shows us the aggregate value, aggregate CPC value of the keywords that are triggering


snippets.


1.75 million in January, 3.08 million in July.


So there's more snippets than ever, they're for more queries than ever, and they're worth


more than ever.


To get started, I want to actually walk through some of the snippet types.


You've already seen this one.


What is a content scraper?


This is a paragraph snippet.


This is a table snippet.


This is a list snippet.


Three core snippet types.


This graph shows us the occurrence rate at which we saw different snippet types.


The blue is January, the green is July.


And as you can see, paragraphs are predominant.


That doesn't really surprise us.


Most of the content on the internet, in fact, is freeform paragraph-driven content.


Google has given themselves the gargantuan task of having to go out there and provide


people timely, relevant answers on the spot for these questions people are asking.


And well, they have to get that content from somewhere.


The vast majority of the content on the internet being unstructured, well, that means most


snippets are going to be paragraphs.


But we are seeing that trend down.


We saw less paragraphs in July than we saw in January.


And we're seeing more lists and tables than ever.


Two things are happening here.


One is SEOs, people who control content on websites, who care about featured snippets


are getting more savvy.


We believe that people are realizing that they can change the content on their website


to create better user experience in the snippets and thus drive up their CTRs.


We also believe, and we've seen evidence of, Google getting better at being able to take


content and format it into the format they want.


I've seen divs end up as lists, for example.


I haven't yet seen freeform content get turned into a table snippet, but I'm definitely seeing


Google get the ability to start turning paragraphs into lists in those snippets.


So Google is interested in chasing different user experiences other than paragraphs.


The first core truth that I want you all to hold onto for the rest of this talk is that


the format of your content determines the format of the featured snippet.


What I'm saying is, if Google has selected your site to be in a snippet and your content


is in a table, that snippet will be a table.


If Google has selected your content to be in a snippet and that content is a paragraph,


that snippet will be in a paragraph.


By the way, we also see images on all three types of featured snippets.


Now I'm not going to spend a ton of time here because, well, what we see is a diminishing


importance of images across all featured snippets.


And you can see it in the data, blue being January, green being July, a major downtick,


especially for lists and tables.


We believe that Google is not really invested in images as part of their featured snippet


solution because featured snippets are all about responding to voice search and mobile


search patterns, and you can't really speak back an image to the end user who's doing


a voice search.


What we do know is that there's a lot of risk for Google associated with pulling images


out because you have to be highly certain that the image you're selecting is actually


the appropriate image that somehow supports the snippet answer.


That's why if you're going to do anything, just be Wikipedia, good luck with that.


But the point is that Wikipedia has tons of image snippets and that's because Google has


a high degree of trust when it comes to Wikipedia's crowd source editorial process.


They know that they can trust Wikipedia images.


So when they're using images and snippets, predominantly they're coming from Wikipedia


and their Wikipedia-based snippets.


The truth is though is that Google doesn't really need to invest in images for snippets


because they already have this universal result type of images.


So if the query that I'm asking warrants an image as the number one result, they're just


going to show me that universal result type for images.


They're not going to bother with the snippet.


Speaking of universal results, this table is a bit of a lay of the land for the appearance


of universal results across the entire one million keyword set.


So this isn't just the SERPs where we saw snippets.


This is all one million keywords.


I just want to show this to you because I want to demonstrate that it's not that choppy


out there when it comes to universal results.


They're pretty much the same in January as they were in July.


Yeah, we saw a downtick in images, but that's not the purpose of my study, so I'm not going


to spend any time ruminating on that.


The point is that things aren't changing that much.


On the other side, we have this chart which shows how often we saw featured snippets alongside


different universal results, like on the same SERP.


This chart is super important because places is 0%.


It has been in January, it has been in July, probably will be right now.


The point is you never, ever, ever see places, results, and featured snippets on the same


SERP, not once.


We believe that's because there are two key different user experiences or search patterns.


For example, when I see a places result, it's because I'm looking for a business, I'm looking


for a place, I'm trying to get somewhere, I'm looking for a review, high local intent


queries.


When I'm seeing snippets, it's because I'm doing informational queries, I'm looking for


knowledge, I'm looking for answers.


There are two very different query types, two very different user experiences, and thus


never the twain shall meet.


You never, ever, ever see the two on the same SERP.


That brings me to my first piece of advice that you guys can share with your team and


your audiences, which is local intent queries never, ever, ever have featured snippets.


If you're a local SEO, Greg, I'm really sorry, you got to go home because you don't get to


play with the other SEOs because you never will get a featured snippet.


Sorry, dude.


While we're talking about universal results, let's talk about people also ask boxes.


This chart shows us the occurrence rate of a people also ask box on a snippet SERP.


In January, 22% of the time we saw a snippet, we also saw a PAA box.


In July, that's 44% of the time.


It's a massive increase.


We see a very strong correlation between PAA boxes and featured snippets.


This chart shows how often the first answer in a PAA box was the exact same content in


a featured snippet.


24% of the time, i.e. one in every, well, a quarter of all snippets had the exact same


content in the PAA as was in the snippet back in January.


In July, that's down to 5%.


That's a pretty big drop.


What we see is that PAA boxes represent this ability for you to actually figure out what


sort of content Google likes for snippets because the PAA box is a collection of similar


queries.


It used to be that Google was using the PAA box to test different possible answers for


featured snippets, but now we're seeing PAA boxes as a way to disambiguate your query,


to find different or similar queries that might actually be a better answer to your


question.


Now, this is the next piece of advice for you to share with your audience, which is


you can use the PAA box to inspire your content that you're trying to optimize for featured


snippets, and you can also use it as a way to map out the query space for the keywords


that you're tracking.


That's really powerful because if I'm targeting one type of query, but I can use the PAA box


to see all the other similar queries that are surrounding it, I can start to build out


a map of all the similar query spaces and all the similar questions that I might optimize


my content for.


Now, we've talked about snippets, I've talked about universal result types.


I actually want to talk about the keywords that drive those SERPs, the keywords that


create the SERPs where we're seeing those snippets.


It's always a good idea to optimize for how or what queries.


For example, what is a McTwist and McTwist?


For those, I get a snippet for both of them.


By the way, McTwist is a weird snowboard trick.


Now you know, you don't have to Google it.


The point is that when I Google them, those two queries, I get the exact same snippet


because Google has gotten scary good at understanding the intent behind my query.


They know that when Rob puts in a random word like McTwist, he's trying to figure out what


the hell it means for his MozCon talk.


And when he puts in what is a McTwist, well, that's very precise.


There's no implication or no...


Google doesn't need to determine what the implication of that query is because it's


a very precise query.


But that doesn't apply for all queries.


How do I build a roof?


I get a snippet.


Build a roof, no snippet.


The point is that you have to pay attention to your query variance and your keyword variance.


Snippets only appear for some, and even if they do appear for both versions of a query,


they might not be the same snippet.


Now, you might be the kind of devil-may-care SEO who says, you know, forget it.


I'm just gonna optimize my content around the core question and let Google worry about


the implication.


I applaud you.


Go for it.


Don't worry about it.


You don't have to take on that extra burden of worrying about all the implications.


But it's something to be aware of.


One of the things in our study that I like the most is we took all these keywords, remember,


a million keywords, a million search queries, and we broke them out into individual words


that comprised each search query, and then we grouped those words into categories.


So we have a whole bunch of words that are related to financial terms, a whole bunch


of mathematic terms, a whole bunch of, you know, health terms, DIY process terms.


And now I'm able to tell you the frequency at which we see snippets appear for certain


words.


The power there is being able to understand what sorts of words might commonly trigger


a snippet.


This chart might not be super exciting.


It isn't to me, because I already know that snippets are increasing across the board.


Therefore these changes in the change column are to be expected.


What I can tell you is that if you were to use a word in any one of these five categories,


you have a better than 50% chance of triggering a snippet.


I hope you guys understand the size of this opportunity now and how prevalent snippets


have become.


One in every two queries in this category, or any of these five categories, will trigger


snippets.


What is super cool is this.


In January, there were a whole cohort of different query types that we almost never saw trigger


featured snippets.


Look at subjective.


0.41% occurrence rate in January.


18.14% occurrence rate in July.


It's a massive change.


4,000% increase.


Huge.


In fact, the word best, we had the word best 20,000 times in our dataset, and not once


did it ever trigger a featured snippet.


It was like this crazy featured snippet stop word.


If you use the word best, you never got a snippet.


Now I'm seeing the word best appear in 18,000 different queries that have featured snippets


in my dataset.


It's just a massive change.


Next piece of advice.


If you're in a space that revolves around product guides, buying guides, rankings, reviews,


comparisons, this is your golden hour.


Go out and get those snippets.


It's been changing for about two months now, so you still have plenty of opportunity to


go out and get snippets for yourself if you're in this space, because now that's opened up


to you, and you can try to get those snippets for yourself.


I love this chart.


You guys might not know why, because I'll have to explain it to you.


I love this chart because it shows us that things are in flux.


I've been telling the story about how snippets are just up and up and up and up, and the


opportunity is bigger and bigger and bigger, and the truth is, well, yeah, that's correct,


but we do see cases where snippets just disappear for no reason.


They just disappear.


Look at the word salary.


77% occurrence rate in January.


68% occurrence rate now.


The truth is that these things are actively being tested and changed, and you cannot rely


just because you got a snippet yesterday or last month doesn't mean you're going to have


that snippet tomorrow or next month.


I had a snippet for my name for a few brief, glorious hours, and then it evaporated.


I was devastated, but life goes on.


The point is, I want to demonstrate that things are changing rapidly.


In this just six-month period, I've seen salary go down.


Look at taxes and fees.


They're going up.


If you're in any way invested in getting feature snippets for your own business or your own


web properties, you absolutely have to be tracking this stuff somehow.


It just so happens that here at Moz, you have the Moz cert feature explorer, which does


a really great job of doing that if you're SMB, medium-sized scale.


There's also Stat in the partner hub, which also does cert feature tracking, and it's


geared more towards large-scale enterprise stuff.


Both Moz and Stat would be happy to show you what they have.


Obviously, you can't do it on stage, but down in the partner hub, you can get a flavor for


it for yourself.


By the way, there are other tools that do this.


If you're curious to know what they are, ask me.


I've seen almost all of them.


I'm happy to make recommendations.


Now we have this data on the occurrence rate for different format types, and I have this


data on the occurrence rate for different query types.


I want to intersect them.


I want to take those two pieces of data and intersect them and thus draw out some assumptions


about the content formats we should be using for different queries.


These are three words in the finance category.


Salary and tuition.


We see a very clear disposition from Google to use tables when people are looking for


the word salary or the word tuition.


Remember those subjective words I talked about, words like rankings, reviews, comparison?


Look, it's all tables.


Google's saying, hey, when people are reviewing or looking at comparisons of products, the


best user experience is for me to give them a table because they're trying to compare


multiple data points in one view.


It's the best searcher experience, and thus you can see it borne out in the data.


Google's highly invested in showing tables when you're in this query space.


Here's the info help category.


Course and programs.


Again, tables.


I want to give you some examples.


Course requirements for physical therapy.


Texas approved driver safety course.


Medical school course requirements.


Wait, that's not a table.


Weird, right?


In fact, it's a really crappy list.


Look at the first result.


Please note, students who have been enrolled in medical school and eligible to apply for


admission to first year class, that's terrible.


What information does this give me?


I'm looking for the requirements for going to medical school and understanding what courses


I have to take.


I have a list of courses.


I don't know how many credits I have to have, how recent those courses have to be, what


level those courses have to have been taken to.


None of that information is given to me, and you know why?


It's because Google can't accurately find that information and put it in a table even


though they'd love to.


This is a super, super, super weak snippet.


It's evident that for that query space, Google prefers tables.


So if you were to optimize your content into a table and allow Google to extract that with


confidence, what do you think might happen?


Remember, 29% of snippets are tables.


This isn't a small opportunity.


It's a very big opportunity.


In fact, Google is really doubled down since January on the table UX for searchers.


They're simply perfect for certain query types.


Here's more examples just to drive that point home.


Green insurance companies, RN Salary Los Angeles, Best Miles Reward credit card, online nursing


school.


This one's a bit crappy, actually, because you look at the right column, they couldn't


find the header for it.


So if I was this company, I'd be trying to optimize that snippet.


Online accredited Christian colleges.


Again, a list, but the query is very similar to other queries in this query space.


And once again, I'm getting this list and not a very good user experience, or at least


it's a user experience that we know we could make better with more data because people


want to compare different Christian colleges.


Let's look at that website.


Here we see that there actually are four data points that they're providing.


The name of the university, the score.


Sorry, I flipped you guys off.


I didn't mean to count like that.


Online cost for credit, religious affiliation.


So there are four key points that they would love to surface.


If you look at the HTML, you see it's in divs.


Google's so desperate to give people something other than a paragraph for this query that


they put the legwork into being able to take that div and turn it into a list.


And they've done the best they can.


But this is a super weak snippet.


If you were to put this data in a table so that Google can extract it with confidence,


you will take it from them.


And that's a very key piece of advice I have for you all to share with your team and share


with your audiences.


You can steal weak snippets.


Use the format Google really wants to see for a query.


If you're paying attention to the data and your tracking that you have set up, you're


going to be able to see in my query space what snippets are tables, what snippets are


lists, what snippets are paragraphs.


If you spot queries that have outlier formats, i.e. they're not the format that's most common


in that query space, target it.


It's one of those rare situations where your interests and Google's interests are closely


aligned.


You want traffic.


Google wants to provide people with timely answers and good experiences.


If you put the content in a format that helps Google give people a good search experience,


you win, Google wins, the searcher wins, the person whose snippet you stole doesn't win,


but life goes on.


Now, there are other snippet query types, other snippet formats, of course.


I mentioned that there's also lists and paragraphs.


Let's take a minute to look at some of those.


This chart shows us the breakdown of formats for words in the general question category.


We see a really strong disposition towards paragraphs throughout, except for the word


how.


How is kind of a funny word, because I can say how, like how do I poach an egg, and I


get a list because I'm getting instructions on how to poach an egg.


I can't believe people ask this.


It's not hard.


Like, hot water and an egg.


Don't be lazy.


But also, like, I get a paragraph and I go how does evaporation work, because I'm not


asking for instructions or directions.


I'm looking for knowledge.


If I say how do I wax a car, I'm looking for instructions, because I know nothing about


cars.


If I ask how do frogs croak, it's because I'm answering my nephew's weird questions


and I need a paragraph.


You could also take an example like how does global warming occur, in which case you get


like a paragraph, because that's a knowledge question.


Technically, it could be a list of steps to cause global warming if the first step was


greed, but I digress.


That brings me to my next point.


Share this with your team.


Share it with your audience.


You should base your decisions on how to format your site content based on the formats of


the featured snippets you're seeing in your query space.


There's a good rule of thumb.


You could say, okay, if I'm doing like informational answers, I'm going to do a paragraph.


If I'm giving people directions on how to find something or how to do something, I'm


going to use a list.


If I'm trying to optimize for an experience where people need to compare or review multiple


data sets in one view, I should use a table.


That's probably a pretty reliable rule of thumb, but if it were me and I had access


to really good tracking to look at these snippets and understand the different trends for different


formats for different query spaces, I would let that information tell me how to structure


my onsite content.


Another piece of advice for you all.


I sense a gold rush coming, and this is one I'm really excited about, and I'll tell you


why in just a moment.


First of all, online nursing schools.


This is the United States.


In my mythical land of hockey and plaid, we lose out.


We don't get any snippets for this query, but I know that there are Canadians who want


this answer to appear in the SERPs, but you think about that user experience.


If I was in Canada and I was looking for online nursing schools, and I Googled and I saw a


snippet that had United States information in it, that's not a very good experience for


me.


Google knows that, so they're not showing a snippet here because they haven't yet been


able to source the right content for the snippet in Canada.


What I am telling you is that we're seeing featured snippets roll out to all these other


countries.


What you know is you're able to look at your market of the United States, and if you see


a snippet there but you don't see a corresponding snippet in another geographic market, understand


that that's an opportunity for you.


If it makes sense for your business, consider creating geographically relevant content in


those other markets so that you can take over some of those snippets.


Now, I want to take some time and wrap up some of the key advice I have for you all.


The first thing that I want to get out of the way, though, is I want you all to understand


that featured snippets aren't going anywhere.


We do this thing as SEOs where we get excited about the latest trend, like authorship or


something maybe, and we chase it and we put all this work into it and all of a sudden,


boom, it's gone, right?


We're like, fuck, I can't swear.


We're all like, darn, can't do that.


The point is that we're used to being burned by Google changing their opinions or changing


how they do things.


What I'm here to tell you is that I believe featured snippets aren't going anywhere.


They're a cornerstone of Google's strategy when it comes to voice search.


As people switch over to mobile devices and voice search experiences, they're speaking


to their phones and their devices and verbally asking queries and the best experience is


to have an answer spoken back to them.


Google needs something that allows them to do that.


You can't do that with typical organic results.


Therefore, featured snippets are super important to that strategy.


So what I'm trying to say is don't be afraid of investing yourself in this opportunity.


If it does disappear, please don't go lynch mob on me and come after me.


Now, to recap some of the advice for you all, first thing, you have to use something to


track this.


The data is changing too quickly.


It's moving too fast.


The change is too rapid and there's just too many potential queries that you could target


that you might not even think about.


You have to use something to track it.


There are lots of great tools out there that can do it and if you're curious to learn about


them, come talk to me.


Oops, went too fast.


Local intent queries never have featured snippets.


Remember, if you're in the local space and you're going after, let's say you're working


for a hotel property and you're looking at SERPs for queries that have places results


on them, don't even think that you're going to get a featured snippet because you're not.


They will never be on the same query.


Number three, let those people also ask boxes inspire your own featured snippet content.


Google is literally telling you, hey, here's the answers that we think are the best answers


for similar queries and you can use that content to help inspire what you should be putting


on your own site.


You can also use that as an opportunity to build out that universe of your query space,


which is very, very hard to do, by the way.


Keyword research is an incredibly fraught domain and the people also ask boxes kind


of like a little skeleton key into that where you can see all the similar queries that are


related to the root query that you're targeting.


Four, pay attention to those variants.


Snippets only appear for some variants and they don't appear for others and if they do


appear for both, they might not even be the same snippet.


So if you're really crossing your T's and dotting your I's, that means our research


got a little bit harder.


Five, remember, if you're in a space that revolves around reviews, product reviews,


rankings, buyers guides, comparisons, go out and get those snippets.


There's tons of queries in that space that do not yet have snippets, but we're seeing


them accumulate every day.


Six, you can steal weak snippets.


I think this is probably my favorite takeaway for you all to remember.


Pay attention to the data, spot opportunities, steal weak snippets, create better searcher


experiences for your audience, help Google out and win in the process.


That almost never happens.


Seven, when you are deciding to structure your onsite content, make sure you're paying


attention to what you're seeing in the formats and structure your content to suit.


Eight, look for those missing featured snippets in other markets.


I would love to see more great snippets in Canada and I'm relying on all of you to help


me have a better experience when I use Google.


That's my snippet that I had for a while which disappeared and devastated me.


You can see it did exist.


I want to tell you all, if you want to download the white paper, there was a very intense,


long PDF that we created about all this data and you can also get the data set.


The actual data that went into this talk and my previous talks on the subject and the slides


from this talk, you go to getstat.com.


We'd be happy to hook you up with that.


For now, that's it.


Thank you very much for your time.


Thank you.


Thank you, Rob.


All right.


We have three minutes for some quick-fire questions.


A question from a Rand Fishkin, I think.


Who's that?


He wants to know if there's some, if you've got any ideas or insights into what Google


might be looking at to decide whether they're going to give a snippet to this search result


and when they're going to take it away.


Yeah.


Okay.


I'm going to speak right to you.


I wanted so bad to crack that nut.


We looked at domain authority, page authority, link metrics, social metrics.


We pulled apart Fleisch-Kincaid reading scores.


We looked at really weird things like keyword density, even all that.


I couldn't really pull anything that I thought was meaningful enough or that I was confident


enough to share with the audience.


Unfortunately, I have to say, I just don't have that answer.


Can it be a game plan?


Absolutely could be.


Your time on site, your bounce rate, the topical authority that you have, some of the stuff


Joe was just talking about there, I could definitely be a part of it.


I just have not yet had the time or the enough data to really be able to confidently make


any recommendations there.


Next year.


Yeah, right.


I hope.


A couple of people asked a similar question.


Hopefully, you can clear this up for people quickly.


Do you have to be ranking a certain organic position?


Do you have to be number one?


That's what's super, super cool.


Okay.


It's this bizarre opportunity where you can win the game by not even playing because you


don't have to be in position one to get to the top of the featured snippet.


You can be in position number four or five and leapfrog everyone into that position.


And interestingly, we note that when you query SERPs that are larger, more than 10 results,


the snippet can come from any position on the SERP.


So if it's like 100 result SERP, that snippet can come from position 50.


It's highly dynamic based on the number of results that are in the SERP.


Not even the top 10.


Oh yeah, no.


It depends on what kind of SERP you're looking at.


The most common SERP your users, like my mom and dad, are seeing 10 by 10 SERPs.


So 10 results deep, 10 pages long, right?


And in those cases, you're seeing snippets come out of position five, six.


Pretty common.


Yeah.


You might have to disappoint us with an answer to this one, but is there any way to actually


track clicks on these results?


Can we differentiate between a click on this result and a regular search result?


No, not thanks to Google.


I mean, like, they don't want us to be able to do any of that stuff, right?


So there's no way for me to be able to tell you definitively if this piece of traffic


came from a featured snippet or came from an organic result.


You can make inferences based on the amount of traffic that you're getting.


Let's say it's a highly targeted landing page that clearly could only rank for a narrow


set of queries, and your organic is quite low, and you know you're in the featured snippet


and your traffic's going high.


You know the majority of that's coming from a featured snippet.


But it's actually a good question.


Now I want to look at some of those studies about where they looked at conversion rate


on page and ask how do they know for sure that those conversions or those visits were


coming from the snippet.


Okay.


A few questions are about the value of doing this and whether people were staying on the


search result when they read a snippet or whether they are actually clicking through.


Is it generating real value?


I have really good advice here, actually.


So take, for example, let's say I was telling someone I lost a button.


What a shame.


Let's say I was saying to somebody that I was trying to teach them how to make toast.


Okay?


I'll never do that.


But the snippet is like step one, put the bread in the toaster.


Step two, toast the bread.


Step three, eat it.


If I added a fourth or fifth step so it was truncated in the snippet, i.e. you didn't


get the full set of steps to make toast, people would be more likely to click on it to get


the whole set.


So think about how you can optimize your snippets by making it so that you don't give away the


entire farm in the snippet.


They have to go through to your website and actually get that information.


Last real quick question.


A bunch of people asked this and none of them used language I can read on stage.


What was the $1,000 cost per click that you showed in the dataset?


I think it was CRM.


Oh, wow.


I'm not sure, though.


You know what?


Okay.


So you go to that landing page, get stat.com slash moz.


The whole dataset is there.


Download it and tell me.


I think it's CRM.


Fantastic.


Rob Bucci, thank you so much.


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This is actually a topic that I used to put poor, innocent new recruits through, particularly


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if they came from a non-marketing background.


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Even though this is considered by a lot of people to be an advanced topic, I think it's


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something that actually it makes sense for people who want to learn about SEO to learn


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first because it's foundational.


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And if you think about a lot of other technical SEO and link building topics from this perspective,


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they make a lot more sense and are simpler and you kind of figure out the answers yourself


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rather than needing to read 10,000 word blog posts and patents and this kind of thing.


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Anyway, hold that thought.


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Because it's 1998, I am six years old and this is a glorious state of the art video


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game and internet browsing that I do in my computer club at school looks a bit like this.


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I actually didn't use Yahoo, I used X-site, which in hindsight was a mistake, but in my


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defense I was six.


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The one thing you'll notice about this as a starting point for a journey on the internet


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compared to something like Google or whatever you use today, maybe even like something that's


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built into your browser these days, there's a lot of links on this page and mostly there


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are links to pages with links on this page.


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It's kind of like a taxonomy directory system.


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And this is important because if a lot of people browse the web using links and links


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are primarily a navigational thing, then we can get some insights out of looking at links.


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They're a sort of proxy for popularity.


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If we assume that everyone starts their journey on the internet on Yahoo in 1998, then the


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pages that are linked to from Yahoo are going to get a lot of traffic.


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They are by definition popular and the pages that those pages link to will also still get


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quite a lot and so on and so forth.


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And through this, we could build up some kind of picture of what websites are popular.


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And popularity is important because if you show popular websites to users in search results,


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then they will be more trustworthy and credible and likely to be good and this kind of thing.


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This is massive oversimplification, bear with me, but this is kind of why Google won.


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Google recognized this fact and they came up with an innovation called PageRank, which


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made their search engine better than other people's search engines and which every other


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search engine subsequently went on to imitate.


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However, is anything I said just now relevant 23 years later?


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We definitely do not primarily navigate the web with links anymore.


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We use these things called search engines, which people might know something about, but


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also we use news feeds, which are kind of dynamic and uncrawlable and all sorts of other


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non-static HML link based patterns.


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Links are probably not the majority even of how we navigate our way around the web, except


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maybe within websites.


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And Google has better data on popularity anyway, right?


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Google runs a mobile operating system.


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They run ISPs.


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They run a browser.


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They run YouTube.


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There's lots of ways for Google to figure out what is and isn't popular without building


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some arcane link graph.


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However, be that true or not, this still is a core methodology to underpins how Google


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works on a foundational level.


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In 1998, it was the case that PageRank was all of how Google worked really.


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It was just PageRank plus relevance.


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These days, there's a lot of nuance and layers on top and even PageRank itself probably isn't


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even called that and probably has changed and been refined and tweaked around the edges.


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And it might be that PageRank is not used as a proxy for popularity anymore, but maybe


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as a proxy for trust or something like that.


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And it has a slightly different role in the algorithm.


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But the point is we still know purely through empirical evidence that changing how many


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and what pages link to a page has a big impact on organic performance.


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So we still know that something like this is happening.


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And the way that Google talks about how links work in their algorithm still reflects a broadly


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PageRank based understanding, as do developments in SEO directives and Hreflang and RelAmp


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and this kind of thing.


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It still all speaks to a PageRank based ecosystem, if not a PageRank only ecosystem.


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Also, I'm calling it PageRank because that's what Google calls it.


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But some other things you should be aware of that SEOs use.


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LinkEquity I think is a good one to use because it kind of explains what you're talking about


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in a useful way.


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LinkFlow, it's not bad, but LinkFlow is alluding to a different metaphor that you've probably


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seen before where you think of links as being sent through big pipes of liquid that then


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pour in different amounts into different pages.


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It's a different metaphor to the popularity one.


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And as a result, it has some different implications if it's overstretched.


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So use some caution.


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And then linking strength.


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I don't really know what metaphor this is trying to do.


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It doesn't seem as bad as link juice, at least fine, I guess.


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More importantly, how does it work?


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I don't know if anyone here hates maths.


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If you do, I'm sorry, but there's going to be maths.


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So the initial question is, or the foundation of all this is, imagine that, so A in the


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red box here, that's a webpage to be clear in this diagram.


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Imagine that the whole internet is represented in this diagram.


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There's only one webpage, which means this is 1970 something, I guess.


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What is the probability that a random browser is on this page?


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We can probably say it's one or something like that.


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If you want to have some other take on that, it doesn't matter because it's all just going


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to be based on whatever number that is.


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From that though, we can try to infer some other things.


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So whatever probability you thought that was, and let's say we thought that if there's one


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page on the internet, everyone's on it.


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What's probability that a random browser is on the one page A links to?


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So say that we've pictured the whole internet here, A is a page that links to another page,


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which links nowhere.


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And we started by saying that everyone was on this page, well, what's probability now


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after a cycle that everyone will be on this page?


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Well, we go with the assumption that there's an 85% chance, and the 85% number comes from


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Google's original 1998 white paper.


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There's an 85% chance that they go onto this one page in their cycle, and a 15% chance


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that they do one of these non-browser based activities.


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And the reason why we assume that there's a chance on every cycle that people exit to


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do non-browser based activities, it's just otherwise we get some kind of infinite cycle


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later on.


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We don't need to worry about that.


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But yeah, the point is that if you assume that people never leave their computers and


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that they just browse through links endlessly, then you end up assuming eventually that every


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page has infinite traffic, which is not the case.


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That's the starting point where we have this really simple internet.


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We have a page with a link on it and a page without a link on it, and that's it.


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Something to bear in mind with these systems is obviously web pages don't have a link on


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them, and web pages with no links on them are virtually unheard of, like the one on


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the right.


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This gets really complex really fast.


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If we try to make a diagram just of two pages on the Moz website, it would not fit on this


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screen, right?


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So we're talking in really simplified versions here, but it doesn't matter because the principles


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are extensible.


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So what if the page on the left actually linked to two pages, not one?


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What is the probability now that we're on one of those two pages?


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We're taking that 85% chance that they move on at all without exiting because the house


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got fired, they went for a bike ride or whatever, and we're now dividing that by two.


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So we're saying 42.5% chance that they were on this page, 42.5% chance they were on this


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page, and then that nothing else happens because there's no more links in the world.


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That's fine.


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What about this page?


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So if this page now links to one more, how does this page of strength relate to page


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A?


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So this one was 0.85 over 2, and this one is 0.85 times that number.


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So note that we're diluting as we go along because we've applied that 15% deterioration


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on every step.


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This is useful and interesting to us because we can imagine a model in which page A on


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the left is a homepage and the page on the right is some page we want to rank, and we're


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diluting with every step that we have to jump to get there.


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And this is crawl depth, which is a metric that is exposed by Moz Pro and most other


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technical SEO tools.


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That's why crawl depth is something that people are interested in, is this.


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Part of it is discovery, which we won't get into today, but part of it is also this dilution


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factor.


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And then if this page actually linked to three, then again, each of these pages is only one


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third as strong as when it only linked to one.


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So it's being split up and diluted the further down we go.


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So that all got very complicated very quick on a very simple fictional website.


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Don't panic.


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The lessons we want to take away from this are quite simple, even though the maths becomes


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very arcane very quickly.


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So the first lesson we want to take is that each additional link depth diluted value.


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So we talked about the reasons for that, but obviously it has implications for site structure.


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It also has implications for some other things, some other common technical SEO issues that


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I'll cover in a bit.


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So if I link to a page indirectly, that is less effective than linking to a page directly,


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even in a world where every page only has one link on it, which is obviously an ideal


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scenario.


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The other takeaway we can have is that more links means each link is less valuable.


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So if every additional link you add to your homepage, you're reducing the effectiveness


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of the links that were already there.


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So this is very important because if you look on a lot of sites right now, you'll find 600


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link mega navs at the top of the page and the same at the bottom of the page and all


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this kind of thing.


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And that can be an okay choice.


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I'm not saying that's always wrong, but it is a choice and it has dramatic implications.


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Some of the biggest changes in SEO performance I've ever seen on websites came from cutting


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back the number of links on the homepage by a factor of 10.


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If you change a homepage so that it goes from linking to 600 pages to linking to the less


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than 100 that you actually want to rank, that will almost always have a massive difference,


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a massive impact more so than external link building could ever dream of because you're


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not going to get that 10 times difference through external link building, unless it's


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a startup or something.


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So yeah, some real world scenarios.


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I want to talk about basically some things that SEO tools often flag that we're all familiar


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with talking about as SEO issues or optimizations or whatever, but often we don't think about


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why and we definitely don't think of them as being things that are part back quite so


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deep into Google's history.


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So a redirect is a link.


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The fictional idea of a page with one link on it is a redirect because a redirect is


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just a page that links to exactly one other page.


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So in this scenario, the page on the left could have linked directly to the page in


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the top right, but because it didn't, we've got this 0.85 squared here, which is 0.7225.


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The only thing you need to know about that is that it's a smaller number than 0.85.


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Because we didn't link directly, we went through this page here that redirected, which doesn't


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feel like a link, but is a link in this ecosystem.


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We've just arbitrarily decided to dilute the page to end the cycle.


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And this is obviously particularly important when we think about chain redirects, which


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is another thing that's often flagged by SEO tools.


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But when you look in an issue report in something like Moz Pro and it gives you a list of redirects


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as if they're issues, that can be confusing because a redirect is something we're also


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told is a good thing, right?


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Like if we have a URL that's no longer in use, it should redirect.


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But the reason that issue is being flagged is we shouldn't still be linking to the URL


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that redirects, we should be linking directly to the thing at the end of the chain.


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And this is why.


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Because this arbitrary dilution that we're inserting into our own website, which is basically


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just a deadweight loss.


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If you imagine that in reality, pages do tend to link back to each other.


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You know, this will be a big complex web and cycle that is, and I think this is where the


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flow thing comes around because people can imagine a flow of buckets that drip round


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into each other, but leak a little bit every step, and then you get less and less water.


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And unless that's an external source.


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If you imagine these are looking background, then inserting redirects is just, you know,


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a deadweight loss.


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We've drilled a hole in the bottom of a bucket.


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So yeah, better as direct link, worse as a 302, although that's a controversial subject,


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who knows that Google sometimes claim that they treat 302s as 301s these days.


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Let's not get into that.


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Canonicals, very similar.


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A canonical from a page rank perspective.


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A canonical is actually a much later addition to search engines, but the economical is basically


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equivalent to a 301 redirect.


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So if we have this badges page, which has two versions, so you can access it by going


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to badges, question mark, color equals brown, or you can say, imagine I have a website that


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sells live badges for some reason in different colors.


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Then I might have these two different URL variants for my badger ecom page filtered


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to brown.


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And I decided that this one without any parameters is the canonical version, literally and figuratively


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speaking.


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If the homepage links to it via this parameter page, which then has canonical tag pointing


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at the correct version, then I've arbitrarily weakened the correct version versus what I


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could have done, which would be the direct link through.


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Interestingly, if we do have this direct link through, note that this page now has no strength


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at all.


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It has no inbound links.


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And also it probably wouldn't get flagged as an error in at all because the tool wouldn't


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find it.


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That, you'll notice I put a tilde before the number zero.


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We'll come to that.


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Page rank sculpting is another thing that I think is interesting because people still


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try to do it even though it's not worked for a really long time.


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This is an imaginary scenario that is not imaginary at all.


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It's really common.


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Moz probably has this exact scenario where your homepage links to some pages you care


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about and also some pages you don't really care about, certainly from SEO perspectives,


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such as your privacy policy.


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Kind of sucks because in this extreme example here, having a privacy policy, there's just


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randomly halved the strength of a page you care about.


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No one wants that.


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So what people used to do is they would use a link level nofollow.


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They use a link level nofollow, which, so the idea was, and it worked at the time, and


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by at the time, I mean like 2002 or something.


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But people still try this on new websites today.


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The idea was that by effectively the link level nofollow removed this link.


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So it was as if your homepage only linked to one page.


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Great.


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Everyone's a winner.


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Side note I talked about before.


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So no page actually has zero page rank.


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A page with no links in the page rank model has the page rank one over the number of pages


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on the internet.


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That's the seeding probability that at the start of, before everything starts going and


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the cycles round and figures out what the stable equilibrium page rank is, they assume


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that there's an equal chance you're on any page on the internet.


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One divided by the number of pages on the internet is a very small number.


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So we can think of it as zero.


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This was changed, our little nofollow hack was changed again a very, very long time ago,


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such that if you use a link level nofollow, and by the way, this is also true if you use


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robots.txt to do this, this link, the second link will still be counted in when we go here


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and we have this divided by two to say we're halving, there's an equal chance that you


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go to either of these pages.


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This page still gets that reduction because it was one of two links.


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But this page at the bottom now has no strength at all because it was only linked to a nofollow.


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So this is kind of, if you do this now, it's a worst of both worlds scenario.


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And you might say, oh, I don't actually care whether my privacy policy has zero strength


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or whatever, but you do care because your privacy policy probably links through the


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top now to every other page on your website.


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So you're still doing yourself a disservice.


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Second side note, I said link level nofollow, meaning nofollow in the HTML is an attribute


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to the link.


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There is also page level nofollow, which I struggle to think of a single good use case


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for that.


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Basically a page level nofollow means we are going to treat every single link on this page


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as nofollow.


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So we're just going to create a page rank dead end.


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This is a strange thing to do.


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Sometimes people use robots.txt, which basically does the same thing.


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Like if I block this page with robots.txt, that's the same in terms of the page rank


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consequences, except there are other good reasons to do that, like I might not want


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Google to ever see this, or I might want to prevent a massive waste of Google's crawler's


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time so that they spend more time calling the rest of my site or something like this.


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There are reasons to use robots.txt.


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Page level nofollow is, you know, we're going to create that dead end, but also we're going


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to waste Google's time calling it anyway.


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This some of the extreme scenarios I just talked about, particularly the one with the


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privacy policy, changed a lot in, for the better, for everyone in 2004 with something


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called Reasonable Surfer, which you occasionally still hear people talking about now, but mostly


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implicitly and it's probably actually an under-discussed or under-held-in-mind topic.


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So these days, and by these days, I mean for the last 17 years, if one of these links was


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that massive call to action and another one of these links was in the footer, like a privacy


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policy link often is, then Google will apply some sense and say, well, the chance that


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people click on this one is very, we were trying to figure out probabilities here, remember?


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So we'll just, we'll split this, this 0.9 and 0.1 still have to add up to one, but we'll


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split them in a more reasonable fashion.


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Yeah, they were doing that a long time ago.


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They've probably got very, very good at it by now.


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No index is an interesting one because traditionally you would think that has nothing to do with


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page rank.


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So yeah, no index tag just means this should never show up in search results, this page


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at the bottom, which is fine.


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There are some valid reasons to do that.


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Maybe you're worried that it will show up for the wrong query that something else in


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your site is trying to show up for, or maybe it contains sensitive information or something


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like this.


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Okay, fine.


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However, when you put a no index tag on something, Google eventually stops calling it.


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And this only emerged, everyone sort of intuitively knew all the pieces of this puzzle, but it


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only emerged that Google only acknowledged that this behavior is what happens a couple


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of years ago.


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So Google eventually stops crawling it and when Google stops crawling on it, it stops


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passing page rank.


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So no index follow, which used to be quite a good thing, or we thought quite a good thing


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to do for a page like an HTML sitemap page or something like that.


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Like an HTML sitemap page, clearly you don't want to show up in search results because


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it's kind of crap and a poor reflection on your site and not a good UX and this kind


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of thing.


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But it is a good way to pass equity through to a bunch of deep pages, right?


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Or so we thought.


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It turns out probably not.


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It was equivalent to that worst case scenario, no page level, no follow in the long run that


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we talked about earlier.


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And again, this is probably why no index is flagged as an error in tools like Moz Pro,


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although often it's not well explained or understood.


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My third theory on how links work is that at this stage, they're no longer a popularity


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proxy because there's better ways of doing that, but they are a brand proxy.


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For a frequently cited brand, a citation and link are often used synonymously in this industry,


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right?


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So that kind of makes sense.


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However, once you actually start ranking in the top five or 10, my experience is that


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links become less and less relevant, the more and more competitive a position you're in


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because people has increasingly better dates to figure out whether people want to click


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on you or not.


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This is some data from 2009, contrasting ranking correlations in positions six to 10 versus


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positions one to five.


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Basically both brand and link become less relevant in all the easily measured versions


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become less relevant, which again is kind of exploring that theory that the higher up


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you rank, the more bespoke and user signal based it might become.


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This is some older data where I basically looked at to what extent you can use domain


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authority to predict rankings, which is this blue bar, to what extent you could use branded


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search volume to predict rankings, which is a screen bar, and to what extent you could


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use a model containing them both to predict rankings, which is not really any better than


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just using branded search volume.


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This is obviously simplified and flawed data, but this is some evidence towards the hypothesis


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How to Get Buy-In for Your SEO Projects — Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to this week's version of Whiteboard Friday.


I am your host this week, Sean Huber.


Currently my role is director of SEO at Trellis Law, but previously I was the senior manager


of SEO at T-Mobile, and that's why we're here today to talk about my experiences while at


T-Mobile.


And that brings me to our topic of this week, how to get buy-in for your SEO projects.


If you go back a few weeks, you can catch a really awesome episode of Whiteboard Friday


from Carrie that talks about the ROI of SEO.


I highly recommend you watch that so that way it helps you with this next step here.


All right.


In the SEO world, you know we're full of challenges.


One of them is the fact that we're super dependent on other teams.


I know at T-Mobile, I was very dependent on my engineering partners.


So getting any project prioritized wasn't always an easy feat, especially because my


goals and timelines don't align with theirs because they have other teams and leaders


and departments of the org that need their services as well.


So I'm going to walk through how to gain that prioritization for your projects and how to


connect our initiatives with their timelines and goals.


So the first step, you want to identify their motivations and goals.


Remember, different teams have different needs.


So you've got to figure out what matters to each of those teams.


Sometimes it's as simple as just educating and letting them know that really it's not


that much work for your SEO projects.


And sometimes that helps.


Sometimes you don't have a complete picture.


You might be missing some data points.


So try to find any other ones that might be relevant to that specific audience you're


trying to sell this to.


And lastly, figure out how does your data align with what they care about.


Now, I was working on a project that was going to help save T-Mobile a few million dollars,


but that only hit the SEO bottom line.


The engineering team that I needed very heavily to push through this project didn't matter


to them.


Even though the company was saving money, at the end of the day, that didn't align to


his goals.


And so I had to figure out, how can I help him help me?


Turns out, obviously, they're resource strapped.


And so I was able to make a deal with them saying, hey, you give me this little bit of


time of resources, SEO won't need you anymore for this type of project.


And so that helped get that project green light.


Once you have all that awesome information that you've collected, it's time to build


that data informed business case.


Put all that together and make sure you customize or tailor it for each of the different audiences


that you'll be presenting to.


Yes, that means you're going to have to build a few decks along the way, but it's going


to pay off in the end because you're making it relevant to them to help sell you why they


should help you.


Now that you have all those decks and everything put together, it's time to pitch and evangelize


why your project needs to be prioritized over others.


These are the elements that should be in that deck to help sell your project.


Really awesome executive summary that says what they're going to get, what you're asking


of them, why you're asking of them, the problem we have today and what it's going to look


like tomorrow when your project's implemented, any test results, white papers, case studies,


anything like that that you gather along the way to help prove why it's important.


A very nice roadmap that talks about timelines and how long you expect this project to last


and obviously very great next steps.


Want to really focus on making sure you customize it to your audience.


I know I've said it before, but it's super important as I've learned in my time at T-Mobile


that different departments have different needs.


Keep it very concise because you know as it starts to bubble up and gets to senior leaders,


they don't have a ton of time to go through a big deck.


Make sure you have clear next steps.


Those leaders love to know what to expect each step of the way and include as much visualizations


as possible.


Make sure you put them in brand colors and things like that because leaders love when


you take that extra minute to finesse it so that it looks like you care about it and that


helps them care that you care.


And then lastly, follow through and follow up.


Always establish and come through on your reporting, timelines, statuses, things of


that nature because that's going to help make it easier to establish the proof of value


that SEO is bringing and it fosters trust so that next time you come knocking on the


door saying, hey, I need your help to create this next project or whatever, they're going


to be like, hey, the SEO team always delivers, makes me look good.


I'll green light whatever you want.


So in the end, our keys for ensuring program success is collaborating with all those different


departments, figuring out what's valuable to them, what's important to them, aligning


it to your SEO goals and what's important to you.


Thank you for watching this week's episode of Whiteboard Friday.


Measuring Website Engagement — Whiteboard Friday

Howdy Moz fans! My name is Dana DiTommaso. I'm president and partner at Kickpoint and we're a


digital marketing agency headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I'm going to be talking to you


today about a question I think many people have which is how do you actually measure website


engagement? And I think it's something a lot of people struggle with because you might be


approaching the period with your website where you're thinking is it time to redo the website?


Is the website actually meeting our goals? But you may not have a lot of the things set up in order


to measure engagement in a way that helps you answer those questions. A lot of times you might


just be shooting in the dark and saying I think this is what's happening but is it truly what's


happening? And you may think you need to add an expensive tool, some sort of screen measurement,


or something like that in order to get what you need, but there's a lot you can do with basic


setup in Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics to measure website engagement. And so that's what


I'm going to talk to you about today. So over here I have different ways to measure and then here


behind me I have different ways to improve. So we're going to start with the stuff we're going


to measure and then we're going to move on to the things we're going to improve. So first off,


think about scroll depth. This is one of the basic metrics that I think people think about but they


don't really do a lot with. And so one of the things that if you're using Google Analytics 4


there's a built-in scroll depth metric which you might already be using, but that only measures 90%


scroll and that might be too far for a lot of people. And what I would recommend is if you're


not using GA4 yet or if you're still using Just Universal, even if you are using 4, make sure


you're also measuring at least 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. You can also measure 90, you can also measure


10. I've seen lots of different ways. You can measure 1%. It seems a little much but I mean you


could do that too. What you're looking for there is the idea of setting individual triggers for


each of these scroll depths because what you want to know is when that 25, 50, 75 and 100 has hit


but you don't just want to save them as events in Google Analytics because there isn't a lot you can


do with that in terms of math. What you want to do is you want to set each scroll depth as a custom


metric and if you aren't familiar with custom metrics in Google Analytics there's dimensions


and there's metrics. So a dimension is something like the city that people were from or the page


that they were visiting and a metric is the number of page views or users that happened. And so in


this case it's the number of times that somebody viewed a page versus the number of times that people


went 25% of the way down the page or 50% or 75%. And when you save those as custom metrics then


you can do some math to figure out what the average scroll depth is for example and that's


a really nice way to figure out if people are actually looking at your stuff or if they are


interested. Or maybe there's a really interesting CTA that's driving them away but then they're not


seeing something even cooler further down. Or maybe the page looks like it's end so they're


not going any further. There's lots of interesting things you can figure out from that.


The next thing is was an important CTA actually viewed? So I think this is a metric that not


only people really think about right you sprinkle CTAs all over your site but you don't know if


anyone's actually looking at them and a page view tells you nothing right because a page view is


just I open up the page and I might have done it accidentally maybe head back right away still page


view I can have the tab open in my browser forever maybe I don't want to get rid of it yet that's a


page view too. Doesn't mean I actually saw anything useful or did anything with that information.


So one of the things you can do in Google Tag Manager is you can create something called an


element visibility trigger and an element visibility trigger is basically what it sounds


like was the element visible. So let's say for example you want to record each call to action


and each call to action is in a you know specific div called CTA for example. So in Google Tag


Manager you would set up an element visibility trigger and you would say every time the CTA is


visible I want you to record an event and then you would know how many times people actually saw that


CTA. Another example we've done for this is sometimes clients will have forms that are only


open if you click a button and so then we would record how many times people actually open click


that button to open the form because your conversion rate if you're just looking at page


views isn't really accurate if they're not actually seeing the form itself right so that way you're


getting a much better sense of how many people are actually viewing the form how many people are


actually filling out the form and that can also help you make some good user behavior decisions


with regards to your website. Now moving on to form engagement some other stuff that I think you


should be measuring is people how they engage with forms because let's be honest that required thing


it sucks I know a lot of people are like well not all the fields are required look at this huge form


that we have but only six fields in 18 are required that's still not a great experience


and I mean we've had forms for a long time now not a lot of people still know that the little star


means required they think they have to fill everything out it seems intimidating they walk


away I think it's pretty well accepted knowledge by now but I also think a lot of people are like


oh but we have to have this big form for reasons. So what you want to know is how people are engaging


with that form again in Google Tag Manager there is a piece of JavaScript you can run that will


record when people enter a form field and then did they fill it out or did they skip it as in


they just clicked into it and they clicked out of it. So I'm going to link in the transcript for this


to a JavaScript recipe made by the company Bounteous that you can put into Google Tag


Manager to record this information. I find it really useful particularly when you're in that


situation where you're saying to a client or your team you know I think we have too many fields in


this form and they're like no everybody uses them. Do they? Now you'll know through this engagement


trigger. Something else that I like to check too is Google Translate usage because again maybe you're


saying it's just in English but you maybe are wondering you know do we have is it worth


translating our site into Spanish or French or you know there's more languages in English in the


world and so one of the things you can check is if people using Google Translate to be your website.


Again in the transcript I will link to a recipe for Google Tag Manager to actually check if people


using Google Translate to be your site which is really interesting and frankly pretty eye-opening


for clients a lot of the time so I recommend using that as well. And then accessibility tool use.


Accessibility is a conversation I think every company should be having with regards to their


website because people use assistive devices to manage their website usage and how they're


actually engaging with websites and not a lot of websites really make accessible experiences


unfortunately. So one of the tools that we use is called Moncido Page Assist and if you go to


our website at Kickpoint.ca you'll see this little widget down in the corner and then if you click


that then we record that yes somebody actually engaged with this and then we can see what


percentage of people on our site are using that widget in order to make their experience better


and then we know you know maybe we need to improve something or maybe this is just them changing the


fonts or whatever it might be. So that's another really good thing you might want to measure when


you take a look at your website. So I've given you some ideas of stuff you can measure. Now how are


ways that you can improve just generally with this data or overall in terms of your website. So this


section over here the Pays to Improve section. So the first thing obviously and I always talk about


this in every talk is you really need to make sure to tie these metrics to your revenue goals.


I think that is just one of the biggest mistakes that people make when reporting on analytics or


really anything is you're not tying it to anything. You're measuring for the sake of measuring but


you're not saying what the impact this is. So for example visitors who see this call to action are


90% more likely to convert to people who don't right. Being able to measure that and be able to


say that stat with confidence maybe not you know that stat specifically but a step that leads to


more you know when thing a happens we make more money that is how you get changes done


and that's one of the best ways to communicate this. So if you can take any of this measurement


stuff and communicate it in a way that really gets it across to whoever is the decision maker if it


isn't you that if you make this change you're gonna make more money hit your goals get your


revenue goals faster that is a really easy way to make sure that this stuff happens.


Next thing one of the things that I think and again I'll link in the transcript to this is a


lot of JavaScript and stuff so I don't necessarily want to write JavaScript out on my whiteboard


here is recording the full refer path. Now you might know that in Google Analytics there is a


dimension called refer path but it isn't necessarily useful. The full refer path is


something that's available in the browser a lot of the time but it isn't something that is captured


by default in Google Analytics. By capturing that full refer path you can get a little bit more


information about exactly where people are coming from and I find that that is also really helpful


information because it can help you sort of segment out a little bit better and say you


know it isn't just people from say Reddit who are coming to the site it's people coming from Reddit


from this specific subreddit and those are the people buying our stuff and that is additional


information that you didn't necessarily have available to you so that I call it the complete


refer is a nice custom dimension to add into your Google Analytics implementation to just get that


little bit more information to help you make better decisions and figure out ways to improve.


And then the third thing this is like a personal pet peeve of mine if I'm already on your newsletter


don't show me a giant pop-up asking me to sign up for your newsletter when I click a link in your


newsletter to get to your website and people think well I don't know how to do this. So here's how


you do it. So you can add a parameter to your URLs it's like question mark subscriber equals yes for


example and then when you deliver that pop over CTA don't deliver it if that parameter exists in


the URL that the person is viewing. That means they're already in the list you can show them


something saying thank you for being a subscriber might be a little bit creepy because people may


not know how you know that they're a subscriber but that's one of the ways that you can just


generally improve things for your user experience. So only show the CTA to the people who could


conceivably convert right because otherwise you're just wasting bandwidth I'm already on your mailing


list stop trying to sell me you already sold me. So I would really recommend adding this parameter


and you can think about it for other CTAs as well. So for example if someone comes to the website via


a link in an invoice or a receipt like they bought something then don't try to sell them on the thing