of don't get that. I mean, I, I want, God, you guys hate my guts. Because, because I


MozCon 2015 - 03 - How To Do Content Strategy (Probably) with Kristina Halvorson

just think that promoting content, that that's kind of a part of this idea of demand gen


and what, I mean, for me, that's just advertising and promotion, except it's for our content.


And if our content is just supposed to be building brand good will, then I, that's kind


of, isn't that what advertising has done for a long time?


Let me pay devil's advocate and maybe just so we're on the same page, but what about


getting eyeballs on the content that you, that you create?


So?


Is it important?


I mean, what's, what's important is brand goodwill, right? And gathering leads and lead


conversion, right? And brand goodwill, I think is important. It's really tough to measure.


But for me, brand goodwill really happens at the service level, at the customer service


level or at the product level, right? Like I, if I, I mean, Dana had some great examples.


If I have, if you guys have great content, but then your service sucks, like I'm not


going to buy you because of your content. Now I'm just depressing everybody. You know,


it's hilarious is that I'm giving the keynote at content marketing world, right? Bring your


tomatoes to throw.


That's all. Christina, we're so glad that you joined us here today. I hope you, I hope


we can have you back another year. I'm sure you're going to get a lot of questions in


the lobby. Please give a warm hand for Christina Halvorson.


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

Hey Moz fans, this is Jim Yule. I'm the blogger behind AgileMarketing.net, the leading blog


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

on agile marketing. And I'm here to talk to you today about agile marketing. Agile marketing


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

is an approach to marketing that takes its inspiration from agile software development.


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

Like agile software development, it has a set of values and it has a set of benefits.


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

We're going to talk about those values and benefits today. So there's six values. Value


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

number one, responding to change over following a plan. It's not that we don't plan, it's


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

just that we don't write 30 to 40 page marketing plans. Instead, every quarter we write a one


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

page plan that specifies our goals, our aspirations to get everybody on the same page. And then


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

every two to four weeks we reset our priorities. We say, this is what we're going to get done


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

during this two to four week period. Second value is rapid iterations over big bang campaigns.


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

In traditional marketing, we get together in a room and we say, we're going to run a


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

campaign for three to six months to a year. We hash out the idea of what we're going to


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

do for that campaign. Then we communicate to the agency. They come up with creative.


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

They review it with us. We go back and forth and eventually we'll run that campaign for


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

three to six months. And you know what happens at the end of that campaign? We always declare


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

victory because we've spent so much money and time on that campaign that every time


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

we say it worked. Well, we take a very different approach in agile marketing. We take an iterative


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

approach. We start out with a little strategy. We meet for half an hour or an hour to figure


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

out what do we think might work. Then we figure out how to test it. We measure the results


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

and this is very important, we document the learning. If something doesn't work, we test


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

it out and it doesn't work, it's okay because we've learned something. We've learned what


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

doesn't work. So then we iterate again and we try something else and we do that. We get


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

that cycle going in a very effective way. The third value is testing and data over opinions


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

and conventions. Here again, the importance is that we're not following the highest paid


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

person's opinion. No hippos. It's all about did we test it? Do we have data? Do we have


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

the right metrics? It's important to select the right metrics and not vanity metrics which


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

make us feel good but don't really result in an improvement to the business. The fourth


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

value is many small experiments over a few big bets. I like to talk about here the 70-20-10


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

rule. The idea behind the 70-20-10 rule is that we spend 70% of our budget and 50% of


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

our time on the things that we know that work. We do it broadly across all our audiences.


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

We then spend 20% of our budget and 25% of our time modifying the things that we know


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

that work and trying to improve them. Maybe we distribute it in a little different way


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

or we modify the content, we modify what the page looks like. But anyways, we're trying


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

to improve that content. In the last 10% of our budget and 25% of our time, we spend on


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

wild ideas. Things where we fully expect that only about 2 or 3 out of 10 ideas is really


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

going to work. And we focus those things on those creative, wild ideas that are going


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

to be the future 70-20%. The fourth value is individuals and interactions over one size


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

fits all. Now I like to think about this in terms of one of the experiences that I have


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

with SEO. I get a lot of requests for link building and a lot of the requests that I


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

get are form requests. They write me a little message that they're writing to hundreds of


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

other people. And I don't pay any attention to those requests. I'm looking for somebody


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

who really knows that I'm writing a blog about agile marketing, who's interacting with me,


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

who maybe says something about a post that I put on agile marketing and those people


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

are the ones that I'm going to give my business to in effect and I'm going to do some link


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

building with them. Same thing applies to all of our marketing. The last value is collaboration


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

over hierarchy and silos. One of the key things in many marketing organizations is that different


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

silos of the organization don't seem to talk to each other. Maybe marketing isn't talking


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

to sales or marketing hasn't got the ear of senior management. Well one of the things


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

we do in agile marketing is we put some processes in place to make sure that all of those groups


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

are collaborating. They're setting the priorities together and they're reviewing the results


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

together. As a result of these six values, there are four important benefits to agile


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

marketing. The first is that you can get more done. I've taught a lot of teams agile marketing


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

and as a whole they tell me that they get about 30 to 40 percent more done with agile


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

marketing. I had one team tell me they got 400 percent more done but that's not typical.


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

So they're getting more done and they're getting more done because they're not doing rework


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

and they're working on the right priorities. The second benefit is getting the right things


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

done. Because you're working with sales, you're working with senior management to set the


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

priorities, you're making sure with agile marketing that you're getting the right things


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

done and that's important. The third thing is adapting to change. Part of our life today


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

in marketing is that things change. We know that Google is going to change their page


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

rank algorithm in 2017. We don't know exactly how but we know it's going to happen and we


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

need to be able to adapt to that change quickly and accurately. And we put processes in place


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

in agile marketing to make sure that happens. The last benefit and people tell me this is


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

the biggest benefit of all for agile marketing is improved communications. Improved communications


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

both within the marketing team and probably even more important outside the marketing


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

team to sales and senior management. By representing what we're getting done on something like


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

a Kanban board, everybody can see exactly what marketing is working on, where it's at


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

and what they're getting done. So that's agile marketing in a nutshell. I'd love to hear


Agile Marketing - Whiteboard Friday


All About Fraggles (Fragment + Handle) - Whiteboard Friday

Hi Moz fans, my name is Cindy Krum and I'm the CEO of MobileMoxie based in Denver, Colorado.


We do mobile SEO and ASO consulting and I'm here in Seattle speaking at MozCon but also


recording this Whiteboard Friday for you today and we are talking about Fraggles.


So Fraggles are obviously a name that I'm borrowing from Jim Henson who created Fraggle


Rock but it's a combination of words, it's a combination of fragment and handle and I


talk about Fraggles as a new way or a new element or thing that Google is indexing.


So let's start with the idea of mobile first indexing because you have to kind of understand


that before you can go on to understand Fraggles.


So I believe mobile first indexing is about a little bit more than what Google says.


Google says that mobile first indexing was just a change of the crawler.


They had a desktop crawler that was primarily crawling and indexing and now they have a


mobile crawler that's doing the heavy lifting for crawling and indexing.


And while I think that's true, I think there's more going on behind the scenes that they're


not talking about and we've seen a lot of evidence of this.


So what I believe is that mobile first indexing was also about indexing, hence the name.


So I think that Google has reorganized their index around entities or around specifically


entities in the knowledge graph.


So this is kind of my rough diagram of a very simplified knowledge graph but knowledge graph


is all about person, place, thing, or idea.


That's kind of nouns, are entities.


And knowledge graph has nodes for all of the major person, place, thing, or idea entities


out there.


But it also indexes or it also organizes the relationships of this idea to this idea or


this thing to this thing.


And what's useful for that to Google is that these things, these concepts, these relationships


stay true in all languages.


And that's how entities work because entities happen before keywords.


This can be a hard concept for SEOs to wrap their brain around because we're so used to


dealing with keywords.


But if you think about an entity as something that's described by a keyword and can be language


agnostic, that's how Google thinks about entities because entities in the knowledge graph are


not written up per se or their unique identifier isn't a word, it's a number.


And numbers are language agnostic.


But if we think about an entity like mother, mother is a concept that exists in all languages


but we have different words to describe it.


But regardless of what language you're speaking, mother is related to father, is related to


grandfather, all in the same ways even if we're speaking different languages.


So if Google can use what they call the topic layer and entities as a way to filter in information


and understand the world, then they can do it in languages where they're strong and say


we know that this is true absolutely 100% all of the time.


Then they can apply that understanding to languages that they have a harder time indexing


or understanding.


They're just not as strong or the algorithm isn't built to understand.


Things like complexities of language like German where they make really long words or


other languages where they have lots of short words to mean different things or to modify


different words.


Languages all work differently but if they can use their translation API and their natural


language APIs to build out the knowledge graph in places where they're strong, then they


can use it with machine learning to also build it and do a better job of answering questions


in places or languages where they're weak.


So when you understand that, then it's easy to think about mobile first indexing as a


massive knowledge graph build out.


And we've seen this happening statistically.


There are more knowledge graph results and more other things that seem to be related


to knowledge graph results like people also ask, people also search for, related searches.


Those are all describing different elements or different nodes on the knowledge graph.


And so when you see those things in the search, I want you to think, hey, this is the knowledge


graph showing me how this topic is related to other topics.


So when Google launched mobile first indexing, I think this is the reason it took two and


a half years is because they were re-indexing the entire web and organizing it around the


knowledge graph.


But if you think back to the AMA that John Mueller did right about the time that knowledge


graph was launching, he answered a lot of questions that were about JavaScript and hreflang.


And when you put this in that context, it makes more sense.


He wants the entity understanding or he knows that the entity understanding is really important.


So the hreflang is also really important.


So that's enough of that.


Now let's talk about Fraggles.


So Fraggles, as I said, are a fragment plus a handle.


And it's important to know that Fraggles, I'm going to go over here, Fraggles and fragments,


there are lots of things out there that have fragments.


So you can think of native apps, databases, websites, podcasts, videos.


Those can all be fragmented.


And even though they don't have a URL, they might be useful content because Google says


its goal is to organize the world's information, not to organize the world's websites.


And I think that historically Google's kind of been locked into this crawling and indexing


of websites and that that's bothered it, that it wants to be able to show other stuff.


But it couldn't do that because they all needed URLs.


But with fragments, potentially they don't have to have a URL.


So keep these things in mind, apps, databases, and stuff like that, and then look at this.


So this is a traditional page.


And if you think about a page, Google's kind of been forced historically by their infrastructure


to surface pages and to rank pages.


But pages sometimes struggle to rank if they have too many topics on them.


So for instance, what I've shown you here is a page about vegetables.


And this page may be the best page about vegetables, and it may have the best information about


lettuce, celery, and radishes.


But because it's got those topics and maybe more topics on it, they all kind of dilute


each other.


And this great page may struggle to rank because it's not focused on the one topic, on one


thing at a time.


And Google wants to rank the best things, but historically they've kind of pushed us


to put the best things on one page at a time and to break them out.


And so what that's created is this content is king, I need more content, build more pages


mentality in SEO.


And the problem is everyone can be building more and more pages for every keyword that


they want to rank for, every keyword group that they want to rank for, but only one is


going to rank number one.


And Google still has to crawl all of those pages that it told us to build.


And that creates this character over here, I think, Marjorie the Trash Heap, which if


you remember the Fraggles, Marjorie the Trash Heap was the all-knowing Oracle.


But when we're all creating kind of low to mid quality content just to have a separate


page for every topic, then that makes Google's life harder and that of course makes our life


harder.


So why are we doing all this work?


And the answer is because Google can only index pages and if the page is too long or


too many topics Google gets confused.


So we've been enabling Google to do this, but let's pretend, go with me on this, because


this is a theory, I can't prove it.


But if Google didn't have to index a full page or wasn't locked into that and could


just index a piece of a page, then that makes it easier for Google to understand the relationships


of different topics to one page, but also to organize the bits of the page to different


pieces of the knowledge graph.


So in this page about vegetables could be indexed and organized under the vegetable


node of the knowledge graph, but that doesn't mean that the lettuce part of the page couldn't


be indexed separately under the lettuce portion of the knowledge graph and so on, salary to


salary and radish to radish.


Now I know this is novel and it's hard to think about if you've been doing SEO for a


long time, but let's think about why Google would want to do this.


Google's been moving towards all of these new kinds of search experiences where we have


voice search, we have the Google Home Hub kind of situation with a screen, or we have


mobile searches.


And if you think about what Google's been doing, we've seen the increase in people also


ask, we've seen the increase in featured snippets.


They've actually been kind of sort of making fragments for a long time or indexing fragments


and showing them in featured snippets.


The difference between that and Fraggles is that when you click through on a Fraggle,


when it ranks in a search result, Google scrolls to that portion of the page automatically.


That's the handle portion.


So handles, you may have heard of before, they're kind of old school web building.


We call them bookmarks, anchor links, anchor jump links, stuff like that.


It's when it automatically scrolls to the right portion of the page.


But what we've seen with Fraggles is Google is lifting bits of text and when you click


on it, they're scrolling directly to that piece of text on the page.


And so we see this already happening in some results.


And what's interesting is Google is overlaying the link.


You don't have to program the jump link in there.


Google actually finds it, puts it there for you.


And so Google is already doing this, especially with AMP featured snippets.


If you have an AMP featured snippet, so a featured snippet that's lifted from an AMP


page, when you click through, Google is actually scrolling and highlighting the featured snippet


so that you could read it in context on the page.


But it's also happening in other kind of more nuanced situations, especially with forums


and conversations where they can pick a best answer.


The difference between a Fraggle and something like a jump link is that Google is overlaying


the scrolling portion.


And the difference between a Fraggle and a site link is site links link to other pages


and Fraggles, they're linking to multiple pieces of the same long page.


And so we want to avoid continuing to build up low quality or mid quality pages that might


go to Marjorie the trash heap.


And we want to start thinking in terms of can Google find and identify the right portion


of the page about a specific topic?


And are these topics related enough that they'll be understood when indexing them towards the


knowledge graph?


So I personally think that we're seeing the build out of the knowledge graph in a lot


of different things.


I think featured snippets are kind of facts or ideas that are looking for a home or validation


in the knowledge graph.


People also ask, seem to be the related nodes, people also search for, same thing.


Related searches, same thing.


Featured snippets, oh, they're on there twice, two featured snippets.


And found on the web, which is another way where Google is putting expanders by topic


and then giving you a carousel of featured snippets to click through on.


So we're seeing all of those things.


And some SEOs are getting kind of upset that Google is lifting so much content and putting


it in the search result and that you're not getting the click, right?


We know that 61% of mobile searches don't get a click anymore.


And it's because people are finding the information that they want directly in the SERP.


And that's tough for SEOs but great for Google because it means Google is providing exactly


what the user wants.


So they're probably going to continue to do this.


And I think that SEOs are going to change their mind and they're going to want to be


in those windowed content, in the lifted content.


Because when Google starts doing this kind of thing for the native apps, databases, and


other content, websites, podcasts, stuff like that, then those are new competitors that


you didn't have to deal with when it was only websites ranking.


But those are going to be more engaging kinds of content that Google will be showing or


lifting and showing in a SERP, even if they don't have to have URLs because Google can


just window them and show them.


And so you'd rather be lifted than not shown at all.


So that's it for me and featured snippets.


I'd love to answer your questions in the comments.


And thanks very much.


Penguin 4.0: How the Real-Time Penguin-in-the-Core-Alg Model Changes SEO - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


This week it is all about Google Penguins.


So Google Penguin is an algorithm that's been with us for a few years now, designed to combat


link spam specifically, and after many, many years of saying this was coming, Penguin 4.0


rolled out on Friday, September 23rd.


It is now real time in Google's algorithm, Google's core algorithm, which means that


it's constantly updating.


So there's a bunch of changes.


What we're going to talk about today is what Penguin 1.0 to 3.x looked like, and how that's


changed as we've moved to the Penguin 4.0 model.


And then we'll cover a little bit of what the rollout has looked like and how it's affecting


folks' sites, and specifically some recommendations.


Thankfully, we don't have a ton.


But important to understand, if people ask you about Penguin, people ask you about the


penalties that used to come from Penguin, you've got to know that back in the day, Penguin


1.0 to 3.x, it used to run intermittently.


So every few months, right, Google would collect a bunch of information, they'd run the algorithm,


and then they'd release it out in the wild.


It would now be in the search results.


And that is the only time, when that rollout happened, that was the only time, pretty much


the only time, that penalties from Penguin specifically would be given to websites or


removed.


That a lot of the time, you had this slow process where if you got penalized by Penguin,


you did something bad, you did some sketchy link building, you went through all the process,


let's say you went through all your processes of getting that penalty lifted, Google said,


fine, you're in good shape, next time Penguin comes out, your penalty is lifted.


You could wait months.


You could wait six months or more before that penalty got lifted.


So a lot of fear here and a lot of slowness on Google's side.


Penguin also penalized, much like Panda, right, where it looks at a portion of the site, right,


these pages maybe are the only ones on this whole domain that got bad links to them.


But Penguin, old Penguin, did not care.


Penguin would hit the entire website, would basically say, no, no, no, no, no, you're


spamming to those pages?


I'm burying your whole domain.


Every page on your site is penalized and will not be able to rank well.


And those sorts of penalties are very, very tough for a lot of websites.


That in fact might be changing a little bit with the new Penguin algorithm.


Old Penguin also required a reconsideration request process, often in conjunction with


disavowing old links, proving to Google that you had gone through the process of trying


to get those links removed.


It wasn't often enough to just say, I've disavowed them.


You had to tell Google, hey, I tried to contact the site where I bought the links or I tried


to contact the private blog network, but I couldn't get them to take it down, or I did


get them to take it down, or they blackmailed me and forced me to pay to them to take it


down and sometimes people did pay and Google said that was bad, but then sometimes it would


lift the penalties and sometimes they told them, okay, you don't have to pay the extortionist


and we'll lift the penalty anyway.


Very manual process here, right?


And finally, Penguin 1.0 to 3.x was really designed to remove the impact of link spam


on search results, but doing it in a weird way.


In a somewhat weird way.


They were doing it basically through penalties that affected entire websites that had tried


to manipulate the results and by creating this fear that if I got bad links, I would


be potentially subject to Penguin for a long period.


I have a theory here.


It's a personal theory.


I don't want you to hold me to it, but I believe that Google specifically went through this


process in order to collect a tremendous amount of information on sketchy links and bad links


through the disavow file process.


Once they had a ginormous database of what sketchy and spammy bad links looked like that


they knew Webmaster had manually reviewed and had submitted through the disavow file


and thought could harm their sites and were paid for or just links that were not editorially


acquired, they could then machine learn against that giant database.


Once they've acquired enough disavows, great.


Everything else is gravy, but they needed to get that huge sample set.


They needed it not to just be things that they, Google, could identify, but things that


all of us distributed across the hundreds of millions of websites on the planet could


identify.


Using those disavow files, Google can now make Penguin more real-time.


So challenges here.


This is too slow.


It hurt too much to have that long process.


In the new Penguin 4.0 and going forward, this runs as part of the core algorithm, meaning


as soon as Google crawls and indexes a site and is able to update that in their databases,


that site's penalty is either lifted or incurred.


This means that if you get sketchy links, you don't have to wait for Penguin to come


out.


You could get hurt tomorrow.


It is also the case that Penguin does not necessarily any longer penalize an entire


domain.


It still might.


It could be the case that if lots of pages on a domain are getting sketchy links or some


substantive portion or Google thinks you're just too sketchy, they could penalize you.


And remember, Penguin is not the only algorithm that can penalize websites for getting bad


links.


There's manual spam penalties and there's other forms of spam penalties too.


So Penguin is not alone here, but it may be simply taking the pages that earned those


bad links and discounting those links or using different signals, waiting different signals


to rank those pages or search results that have lots of pages with sketchy links in them.


It is also the case, and this is not 100% confirmed yet, but some early discussion between


Google's representatives and folks in the webmaster and SEO community has revealed to


us that it may not be the case that Penguin 4.0 and moving forward still requires the


full disavow and the whole reconsideration requests process.


That's not to say that if you incur a penalty you should not go through this, but it may


not be the case that that's the only way to get a penalty lifted, especially in cases,


two cases, no-fault cases, meaning you did not get those links, they just happened to


come to you, or specifically negative SEO cases.


I want to bring up Marie Haynes, who does phenomenally good work around spam penalties


along with folks like Shah Menz and Alan Blyvise, who all three of them have been concentrating


on Google penalties, along with many, many other SEOs and webmasters.


But Marie wrote an excellent blog post detailing a number of case studies, including a negative


SEO case study where the link penalty had been lifted on the domain, and you can see


her results of that.


She's got some nice visual graphs showing the keyword rankings changing after Penguin's


rollout.


I urge you to do that, and we'll make sure to link to it in the transcript of this video.


And finally, Penguin 4.0 is a little bit different from Penguin 1.0 to 3.0 in that it's still


designed to remove the impact of spam links on search results, but it's doing it by not


counting those links in the core algo and or by less strongly weighting links in search


results where many folks are earning spammy links.


So for example, your PPC, your porn, your pills, your casino searches, those types of


queries may be places where Google says, you know what, we don't want to interpret because


all these folks have nasty links pointing to them, we are going to weight links less.


We're going to weight other signals higher.


Maybe it's engagement and content and query interpretation models and non-link signals


that are offsite, all those kinds of things, clickstream data, whatever they've got.


And we're going to push down the value of either these specific links or all links in


the algo as we weight them on these types of results.


So this is what we know so far.


We definitely will keep learning more about Penguin as we have more experience with it,


but we also have some information on the rollout.


So when it started on Friday, September 23, few people noticed any changes.


In fact, the first few days were pretty slow, which makes sense.


It fits with what Google said about the rollout being real time and them needing time to crawl


and index and then refresh all this data.


So until it rolls out across the full web and Google's crawled and indexed all the pages,


gone through processing, we're not going to get there.


So a little effect that same day.


But more SERP flux started three to five days after.


That next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we saw very hot temperatures starting that next week


in MozCast, and Dr. Pete has been detailing those on Twitter.


As far as SEOs noticing, yes, a little bit.


So I asked the same poll on Twitter twice, once on September 27 and once on October 3,


so about a week apart.


And here is the data we got.


Nope, nothing yet.


It went from 76 to 72 percent.


So a little less than a quarter of SEOs, or sorry, a little more than a quarter of SEOs


have noticed some changes.


A lot of folks noticing rankings went up.


Moz itself, in fact, benefited from this.


Why is that the case?


Well, anytime a penalty rolls out to a lot of other websites, bad stuff gets pushed down


and those of us who have not been spamming move up in the rankings.


Of course, in the SEO world, which is where Moz operates, there are plenty of folks getting


sketchy links, right, and trying things out.


And so they were higher in the rankings, they moved down, and so Moz moved up.


We saw a very nice traffic boost.


Thank you, Google, for rolling out Penguin.


That makes our audience development team's metrics look real good.


Four percent and then six percent said they saw a site or page get penalized in their


control and two percent and then one percent said they saw a penalty lifted.


So penalty lifted, still pretty light, but there are some penalties coming in.


There's a few of those.


And then there's the nice benefit of if you don't link spam, you do not get penalized


and every time Google improves on the Penguin algorithm, every time they improve on any


link spam algorithm, those of us who don't spam benefit.


It's an awesome thing, right?


Instead of cheering against Google, which you do if you're a link spammer and you're


very nervous, you get to cheer for Google.


And certainly Penguin 4.0 is a good time to cheer for Google.


It's brought a lot of traffic to a lot of good websites, pushed a lot of sketchy links


down and we will see what happens as far as disavows, reconsideration requests for the


future.


All right, everyone.


Thanks for joining.


We'll be hearing about your experiences with Penguin and we'll see you next week for another


edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Take care.


Searcher Satisfaction - The One-Hour Guide to SEO, Part 3

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to our special edition One Hour Guide to SEO, Part 3 on searcher


satisfaction.


So historically, if we were doing a guide to SEO in the long ago past, we probably wouldn't


even be talking about searcher satisfaction.


But Google has made such a significant number of advances in the last five, ten years that


searcher satisfaction is now a huge part of how you can be successful in SEO.


I'll explain what I mean here.


Let's say our friend Arlan here is thinking about going on vacation to Italy.


So she goes to Google, she types in best places to visit in Italy, and she gets a list of


results.


Now Google sorts those results in a number of ways.


They sort them by the most authoritative, the most comprehensive.


They use links and link data in a lot of different ways to try and get at that.


They use content data, right, what's on the page and keyword data.


They use historical performance data about which sites have done well for searchers in


the past.


And all of these things sort of feed into searcher satisfaction.


So when Arlan performs this query, she has a bunch of questions in her head, right, things


like I want a list of popular Italian vacation destinations, and I want some comparison of


those locations.


Maybe I want the ability to sort and filter based on my personal preferences.


I want to know the best times of year to go.


I want to know the weather forecast and what to see and do and hotel and lodging info and


transportation and accessibility information and cultural tips and probably dozens more


questions that I can't even list out here.


But when you, as a content creator and as a search engine optimization professional,


are creating and crafting content and trying to optimize that content so that it performs


well in Google's results, you need to be considering what are all of these questions.


This is why searcher empathy, customer empathy, being able to get inside Arlan's head or your


customer's head and say, what does she want?


What is she looking for is one of the most powerful ways to craft content that performs


better than your competition in search engines.


Because it turns out a lot of people don't do this.


So if I'm creating, if I'm planning my page, what is the best page I could possibly craft


to try and rank for best places to visit in Italy, which is a very popular search term,


extremely competitive, I would think about, right, obviously there's all sorts of keyword


stuff and on-page optimization stuff, which we will talk about in part four.


But my priorities are answer the searcher's primary questions comprehensively and authoritatively.


If I can do that, I am in good shape.


I'm ahead of a lot of the pack.


Second, I want to provide a great user experience.


That means easy to use, fast loading, well designed, that's a pleasure to interact with.


I want the experience of a visitor, a searcher who lands on this page to be, wow, this is


much better than the typical experience that I get when I land on a lot of other sites.


Priority three, I want to solve the searcher's next tasks and questions with either content


on my own site or tools and resources or links or the ability to do them right here so that


they don't have to go back to Google and do other things or visit other websites to try


and accomplish the tasks like figuring out a good hotel or figuring out the weather forecast.


And a lot of sites don't do this comprehensively today, which is why it's an advantage if you


do.


Priority four is consider some creative elements, maybe interactive tools or an interactive


map or sorting and filtering options that could give you a long-term competitive advantage,


something that's difficult for other people who want to rank for this search term to build.


Maybe that's the data that you get.


Maybe it's the editorial content.


Maybe it's your photographs.


Maybe it's your tools and interactive elements.


Whatever the case, one of the biggest goals of searcher satisfaction is to make sure that


this scenario does not happen to you.


You do not want to give searchers a reason to click that back button and choose someone


else.


The search engine literature calls this pogo sticking, right?


And basically if I do a search for best places to visit in Italy and I click on, let's say,


U.S. News and World Reports and I find that that page does not do a great job answering


my query or it does a fine job but it's got a bunch of annoying popovers and it's slow


loading and it has all these things that it's trying to sell me and so I click the back


button and I choose a different result from Toropia or Earth Trackers.


Over time Google will figure out that U.S. News and World Reports is not doing a good


job of answering the searcher's query, of providing a satisfactory experience and they


will push them down in the results and they will push these other ones that are doing


a good job up in the results.


You want to be the result that satisfies a searcher, that gets into their head and answers


their questions and helps them solve their task and that will give you an advantage over


time in Google's rankings.


All right, we'll see you next time for Part 4 on On-Page Optimization.


Daily SEO Fix: Reporting on Ranking Changes Monthly

Hi there, my name is Maddie and I am part of the onboarding team here at Moz.


Today I'm going to run you through how to get started setting up custom reports within


the campaign section, which is a really great way of sharing information with clients or


with other team members.


In order to set up your custom report within Moz Pro you want to make sure you're in the


campaign section of the tool and then on the left hand side of the menu bar you can just


scroll down until you hit that custom reports tab.


When you select it, it'll bring you through and we can see that there's a few there.


You just want to hit that create or schedule PDF and then you'll see here that there is


kind of a combination of starting from scratch or using these templates.


Now in this case I actually want to just focus on my keyword rankings and looking at the


analysis, so I'm going to choose that rankings analysis report template.


It is kind of imperative to know that if you're wanting to use these templates you do need


to be on the medium subscription or higher.


If you're on anything below the medium you'll just have the option to build one from scratch.


Now in terms of on the right hand side, understanding what's within this report, you can quickly


download and preview it, otherwise you'll see it does give a really good explanation


as to what we see.


So kind of ranging from high level overview of those keywords and their performance, their


search traffic opportunities, so a really good range.


So from here we just want to scroll down to the bottom and choose that create report.


In this case I want to report on this monthly, so I'm going to choose that there and then


select the template.


What you'll now see is the report and you can go in and make the changes that you wish.


The add modules, we'll skip that one because it's a template.


With the design report you could actually go in and change those titles or kind of move


around the modules depending on what you're wanting to report on.


Second to last step is actually going to allow you to preview what you're seeing.


You can download that PDF report, but this is a really good example of what you'd start


to see when that report runs.


Last step is actually going to be that schedule and share.


So like we did at the start, we want to choose to rerun it monthly.


Everyone who's on your current subscription will automatically receive an email with that


report attached.


If you say want to send it to a client or want to send it to someone outside of your


team or outside of the Moz Pro subscription, you have that option there as well and all


you would need is that email address.


And last step is you can choose to customize the subject that they would see and also the


message.


Once you're kind of happy with that, then you can just go ahead and click the finish


and it's all set up and it's going to run automatically every month for you.


If you're wanting to take advantage of chatting to one of our onboarding specialists and maybe


getting a bit of an overview around the tool, then definitely feel free to book in for a


free 30 minute one-on-one session.


In order to do that, you just want to click on the resource center at the top and then


you'll notice the book of walkthrough option is down below.


It'll show availability and you can go in and book it and then talk to either myself


or one of the other onboarding specialists to kind of get you started using the tool


to the best that you need it to be.


Hopefully that was helpful in terms of understanding how to set up the custom reports within the


Moz Pro tool.


If you're wanting to send information to your clients, your colleagues, that's definitely


a really good option to look into.


The Local SEO Certification from Moz Academy

Hi everyone! We here on the MAWS Academy team are so excited that you're interested in learning more about the Local SEO certification series.


My name is Megan and I'll be your instructor for this series. I am a Senior Learning and Development Specialist here at MAWS and I am so excited to take students through this coursework.


I am also delighted to announce that MAWS' very own Local SEO Subject Matter Expert Miriam Ellis will be featured throughout the series.


By the end of this certification, you will be able to explain the pillars of Local Search and how they impact local businesses, establish solid plans for citation and reputation management, investigate local rankings issues, and so much more.


With almost 6 hours of on-demand video content, tasks, quizzes, and a final exam at your disposal, you'll walk away from this certification with not only new knowledge, but also actionable and repeatable strategies for representing a business online.


We've also developed a downloadable workbook for this certification. Upon completion of the certification series, you'll receive an official certificate from MAWS and you'll be able to add it directly to your LinkedIn profile.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and today we're going to be talking about cannibalisation.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Which here in the UK, we spell like this.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

With that out of the way, what do we mean by cannibalisation?


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So this is basically where one site has two competing URLs and performers we suspect less


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

well because of it.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So maybe we think the site is splitting its equity between its two different URLs or maybe


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Google is getting confused about which one to show or maybe Google considers it a duplicate


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

content problem or something like that.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

One way or another the site does less well as a result of having two URLs.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So I've got this imaginary SERP here as an example.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So imagine that Moz is trying to rank for the keyword burgers.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

You know, just imagine that Moz has decided to take a wild tangent in its business model.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And we're going to try and rank for burgers now.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So in position one here we've got inferior burgers and you know we would hope to outrank


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

these people really but for some reason we're not doing.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And then in position two we've got Moz's buy burgers page on the Moz.com slash shop subdirectory


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

which obviously doesn't exist but this is hypothetical.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

This is a commercial landing page where you can go and purchase a burger.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And then in position three we've got this best burgers page on the Moz blog.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

It's more informational.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

It's telling you what are the attributes for good burger, how can you identify a good burger,


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

where should you go to acquire a good burger, all this kind of more neutral editorial information.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So we hypothesize in this situation that maybe if Moz only had one page going for this keyword


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

maybe it could actually supplant the top spot.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And if we think that's the case then we would probably talk about this as cannibalization.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

However the alternative hypothesis is although actually they could be too intensive it might


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

be that Google wishes to show a commercial page and an informational page on this SERP


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

and it so happens that the second best commercial page is Moz's and the best informational page


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

is also Moz's.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And we've heard Google talk in recent years or representatives of Google talk in recent


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

years about having positions on search results that are sort of reserved for certain kinds


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

of results.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

They might be reserved for an informational result or something like that.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So this doesn't necessarily mean there's cannibalization.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So we're going to talk a little bit later on about how we might sort of disambiguate


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

a situation like this.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

First though let's talk about the classic case.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So the classic really clear cut really obvious case of cannibalization is when you see a


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

graph like this one.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So this is the kind of graph you'd see in a lot of rank tracking software.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

You can see time, days in a week, going along the bottom axis.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And then we've got rank and we also want to be as high as possible close to position one.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And then you see the two URLs which are color coded green and red here.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

When one of them ranks the other just falls away to believing it isn't even the top 100.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And basically there's only ever one appearing at the same time.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And they sort of supplant each other in the search.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And when we see this kind of behavior we can be pretty confident that what we're seeing


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

is some kind of cannibalization.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Sometimes it's less obvious though.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So a good example I found recently is if, or at least in my case, if I Google search


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Naples as in the place name, I see Wikipedia ranking first and second.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And the Wikipedia page ranking first was about Naples, Italy.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And the Wikipedia page second was about Naples, Florida.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Now I do not think that Wikipedia is cannibalizing itself in that situation.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

I think that they just happen to have, Google had decided that this page is ambiguous and


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

that this keyword Naples requires multiple intents to be served.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And Wikipedia happens to be the best page for two of those intents.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So I wouldn't go to Wikipedia and say, oh, you need to combine these two pages into Naples,


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Florida and Italy page or something like that.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

That's clearly not necessary.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So if you want to figure out in that kind of more ambiguous case whether there's cannibalization


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

going on, then there are some questions we might ask ourselves, right?


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So one of the best questions we might ask, which is a difficult one in SEO, is do we


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

think we're underperforming?


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So everyone, I know every SEO in the world feels like their site deserves to rank higher,


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

or maybe most.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

But do we have other examples of very similar keywords where we only have one page where


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

we're doing significantly better?


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Or was it the case that when we introduced the second page, we suddenly collapsed?


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Because if we see behavior like that, then that might, it's not clear cut, but it might


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

give us some suspicions, right?


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Similarly, if we look at examples of similar keywords that are less ambiguous in intent,


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

so perhaps in the burgers case, if the SERP for best burgers and the SERP for buy burgers,


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

if those two keywords had completely different results in general, then we might think, oh,


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

okay, there is, we should have two separate pages here, and we just need to make sure


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

that they're clearly differentiated.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So if actually it's the same pages appearing on all of those keywords, we might want to


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

consider having one page as well, because that seems to be what Google is preferring.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

It's not really separating out these intents.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

That's the kind of thing we can look for is, like I say, not clear cut, but a bit of a


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

hint.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Once we've figured out whether we want to have two pages or one, or whether we think


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

the best solution in this case is to have two pages or one, we're going to want to either


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

consolidate or differentiate.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So if we think there should only be one page, we might want to take our two pages, combine


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

the best of the content, pick the strongest URL in terms of backlinks and history and


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

so on, and redirect the URL to this combined page has the best content that serves the


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

slight variance of what we now know is one intent, and so on and so forth.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

If we want two pages, then obviously we don't want them to kind of lie, so we need to make


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

sure that they're clearly differentiated.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Now, what often happens here is a commercial page like this Buy Burgers page, ironically


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

for SEO reasons, there might be a block of text at the bottom with a bunch of editorial


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

or SEO text about burgers, right?


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And that can make it quite confusing what intent this page is serving.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Similarly, on this page, we might at some stage have decided that we want to feature


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

some products on there or something.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

It might have started looking quite commercial.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So we need to make sure that if we're going to have both of these, that they are very


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

clearly speaking to separate intents and not containing the same information and the same


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

keywords for the most part and that kind of thing.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Lastly, it'd be better if we didn't get into the situation in the first place.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So a quick tip that I'd recommend just as a last takeaway is before you produce a piece


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

of content, so for example, before I produced this Whiteboard Friday, I did a site colon


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Moz.com cannibalization.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So I can see what content had previously existed on Moz.com that was about cannibalization.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And I can say, oh, you know, this piece is very old, so we might, it's very old Whiteboard


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

Fridays, we might consider redirecting it.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

This piece mentions cannibalization, so it's not really about that, it's mainly about something


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

else.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

So as long as it's not targeting that keyword, we should be fine and so on and so forth.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

And just think about what other pieces exist because if there is something that's basically


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

targeting the same keyword, then obviously you might want to consider consolidating or


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

redirecting or maybe just updating the old piece.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday

That's all for today.


Cannibalization — Whiteboard Friday


Jen Reacts to Followerwonk Becoming a Stand Alone Tool


Super-Practical Tips for Improving Your Site's E-A-T- Presented by Marie Haynes

This is happening.


Happy Birthday!


Thank you.


It is my birthday.


And this has been a dream of mine to be on this stage.


I am standing here.


I'm not afraid to talk to you, but I'm afraid that I'm going to burst into tears because


I am so grateful to be on this stage.


My husband and I have two young girls, and when they can't sleep at night, I tell them


what helps me fall asleep.


And I say, think of something in your life that's like a goal for you, something that


you want to accomplish, and then imagine yourself doing it.


And so for me, when I can't fall asleep, I picture this very moment that's happening


right now.


Like, this is a big deal.


And the walkout song, is that not the most egotistical thing ever?


If I was you, I'd want to be me too.


I mean, I'm here right now.


And I know many of you are sitting in the audience here and thinking, I want to be on


that stage one day.


And those of you that have imposter syndrome, pay no attention to it.


I was here at MozCon.


My first MozCon was 2014.


And I sat at the lunch tables and went, why am I here?


I don't deserve to be here.


Everybody here is smarter than me.


They know way more about SEO than me.


So don't listen to those voices in your head.


I mean, if you have aspirations to be a leader in your industry, whether it's SEO or something


else, it can happen.


It can happen.


And so I'm going to talk to you today, first of all, about my walkout song.


When MozCon asked me what song I wanted to walk out to, I said, I don't know.


But realistically, when I have this vision at night when I can't sleep, it's this song.


It's me too.


If I were you, I'd want to be me too.


But it seems so egotistical that I said, no, no, I can't do that.


So when I was driving home the day that they asked me what I wanted my walkout song to


be, I thought, well, I'll turn on the radio and get inspired and see what else I can walk


out to.


Well, the song that played when I turned on the radio was Me Too.


And I looked to my right.


I passed this building twice a day on my way to work.


And I have never seen this.


MCon construction.


So it's a sign.


So I am so excited to talk to you today about EAT and quality raters guidelines and so many


things like this.


And we don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to speak super, super, super fast.


We know by now what the quality raters guidelines are.


We know that there are apparently about 16,000 quality raters that use this as a textbook


to learn what Google thinks is quality in web pages.


I personally think that if something is in Google's quality raters guidelines, Google's


already measuring it algorithmically or they want to measure it algorithmically.


And we have all these arguments about EAT.


Is it a ranking factor?


So Ruth was...


Is Ruth here?


Where is Ruth?


There they are.


So Ruth's slide, she tweeted a week ago about her slide.


Is EAT a ranking factor?


No, she said.


So here was my reply.


I seriously...


I don't want to fight Ruth.


I think she's probably not somebody you want to get in a fight with.


But I see what Ruth is saying.


It's not like EAT is page speed or something that is a specific thing that we can say,


if you do this, you will rank better.


EAT is so many things.


And my goal today is twofold.


One is to tell you why EAT is a big part of Google's algorithms.


And secondly, what we can do to improve EAT.


So we had this quote, Ruth showed us this yesterday, from Ben Gomes, the VP of search


at Google, where he basically says, look, if something's in the quality raters guidelines,


it shows us where we want the algorithm to go.


It tells us fundamentally what we think the algorithm should do.


And so the quality raters, there's a lot of things in the guidelines that instruct the


raters here's how you would determine whether this is high quality.


I don't think that the process is necessarily the same for Google's engineers.


They get this information back, and they are able to form their algorithms around this


information.


But I do think that the end result is basically the same.


Google put this document out just earlier this year, this guide on how they fight disinformation,


fake news.


There were a lot of really good things in here.


And they talked about the fact that they get information from the quality raters, and then


Google's engineers can turn that into algorithms.


The document also was the first time, to my knowledge, outside of Google's quality raters


guidelines where Google officially mentioned EAT, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.


And they actually say the ranking system is designed to identify sites with a high level


of EAT.


So of course we want to have EAT for our websites, for our businesses, for our authors, for all


of these things.


I'm going to brag just a little bit.


My team and I, pretty much all that we do these days is deal with sites that have seen


very serious traffic drops, usually in conjunction with a Google algorithm update.


And we have lots of clients that see amazing results like this.


Not everybody.


There are some websites that come to us that we really can't help.


But if you are a legitimate brand or you're working your way to be a well-known brand,


this is something that is definitely possible.


And so all of these sites, now we look at a great number of things with technical factors


and all sorts of stuff like that.


But a huge component of what we look at is, is there a thing that's in the quality raters


guidelines kind of laid out as a sign of low quality that we're not seeing on the, or that


we are seeing on this website?


Are there things that this website can improve upon so that Google's algorithms can think


that they have high EAT and that they're a site that deserves to rank well?


Whenever I talk about EAT, there's always somebody who says, well, wait, wait, I'm a


doctor and I'm not ranking number one, so EAT is not a thing.


I want you to remember that EAT is not just E. So there are three components to EAT.


There's expertise.


And that is, do you actually do this stuff?


We want to see that content is either written or reviewed by people who have actual real


life experience in these topics.


And I noticed in February of 2017, that's where all these people started coming to me


saying my traffic dropped.


It was February 7th, 2017.


And what I was noticing was that technically the site was really good in terms of SEO.


But in every single case, they were being beaten by people whose authors were real life


practitioners of these things.


They were beaten by people with more expertise.


And so remember, though, that EAT is also authoritativeness, which I'm going to talk


mostly on for the rest of this talk, and also trustworthiness, which I don't have time to


go into all of that.


I have a post at mariehaines.com slash trust.


If you have seen drops with Core Algorithm Update, you should really check that post


out because there are many things that Google is probably measuring algorithmically to determine


whether your brand is one that people trust.


And if you're lacking in these features, then it's a good chance that you're not going to


rank for any sort of meaningful queries.


We'll talk just briefly about on-page stuff you can do for EAT.


I believe that every post, unless you are a nationally recognized name in people's houses,


you need every post to have an author bio.


Every author bio should link to a full author page, not just the WordPress, like here's


the posts that this person wrote, but a page that fully extols why this person is qualified


to write on this content.


And this is not just for search engines.


This is for users, too, because they have so many choices to look at when they're reading


on these topics.


And this was an interesting thing that John Mueller said recently.


We know that schema is not necessarily a ranking factor, but schema can help Google to connect


the dots.


It can help Google to say, this brand here is closely connected with this person, or


this author is closely connected.


It's the same author who writes for this authoritative publication.


And so I believe that all of these things we do on our site to improve EAT are just


the start, are ways that we can basically help Google to figure it out and to connect


the dots about what your entities are.


And we'll come back to that in just a minute.


Last year at PubCon Austin, I asked Gary Eash, how does Google algorithmically measure EAT?


And I didn't think that he'd give me an answer, but this is what he said.


He said, it's largely based on links and mentions on authoritative sites.


And so I'm going to come back to this idea of mentions, but this is really, really important.


So let's go back to the quality readers guidelines.


And there are tons of places where they talk about, what do experts say about your website?


Here's another example.


What do experts say about the information that's on your website?


What do recommendations or experts, are experts recommending you?


And that's the type of thing that we need to look at.


And some of you are probably thinking, well, that sounds a lot like PageRank, right?


It sounds a lot like link building.


And you're right.


This is, again, from Google's guide to how they fight disinformation.


They say that the algorithms are identifying EAT and that that's closely connected to PageRank.


I have a theory.


This is a theory.


I can't prove it just yet, but I believe that for YMYL queries, which is essentially any


query that really matters to somebody, that Google only wants to pass PageRank through


sites that have a decent amount of EAT.


Now if this is true, it explains how they can be comfortable in saying that the Penguin


algorithm is really good at just ignoring ultra-spammy links.


So if you get these links from sites that nobody ever visits, if you do all sorts of


blog commenting spam, and in the past those things used to actually help, but now Google


can say, well, these links come from sites that don't have EAT.


And so maybe they don't count those.


So the question that you're all asking then is, how do we do this?


And the title of this talk is Super Practical Tips on Improving EAT.


And so I'm going to start off by talking about how we can identify who an expert is.


So if you take a look at this forum post, this is very clearly not an expert level SEO.


Just from the SEO chat forums, which sadly are no longer here.


Just a couple weeks ago they were shut down.


This question is about when you do blog commenting spam, should you worry about your anchor text


if there are no followed links?


I mean seriously, nobody would trust this person, right, to teach them about SEO.


This is one of my favorite SEO websites.


Take a look at the keyword anchored links to this person's client.


Very clearly not expert level content.


I would say.


But the funny thing is, this is shared with permission.


That first post was me.


The second one is Joy Hawkins.


Where's Joy?


There's Joy.


She shared me that with permission and I said, give me a photo of you like 10 years ago when


you didn't really know that much.


I'm enjoying you a lot more about SEO than I did in those posts.


But look at us today.


We both have the exact same facial expression when we talk.


I think, where's the photographer?


The photographer's always grabbed this like picture whenever I'm talking.


I always look so angry.


But the point is, we got here because of EAT.


EAT is what got us on this stage.


Joy's gonna be talking tomorrow.


You all need to be in her talk.


It's gonna be so good.


And so how, let's tie this all together.


If we look at the quality readers guidelines saying that Google recognizes authority when


other experts on a topic are recommending you.


So look at, I'll get mentioned occasionally in search engine land or in search engine


round table.


Here's Joy being mentioned again in search engine journal.


Here's Joy again being mentioned in search engine round table.


Now if you notice in this search engine round table post, Barry did not link out to Joy.


Where's Barry?


Barry.


The first time Barry mentioned me, I sent him an email.


I said, Barry, could you link that?


He didn't.


But still, that's a mention.


That is a mention in an authoritative website.


A recent Reddit AMA, this is Patrick Stocks, who is an incredibly intelligent SEO, asked


this question of Gary East.


He said, hey Gary, what's the deal with mentions?


They're not links.


They don't pass page rank.


How does Google use them?


And Gary said, hey Patrick, it's for entity determination.


Now we've heard some talk on entities already in this conference.


And I wish I had more time to go into all of the stuff about entities and how Google


can figure out your brand is an entity, you are an entity, your topic is an entity.


And so Google's trying to figure out if all these authoritative people in this industry


are recommending you.


Well maybe you're an entity that's worthy of paying attention to.


It's definitely possible for Google to algorithmically figure out who are the authorities, who are


the websites that we want to recommend, who are the authors that we want to recommend.


So how do we do this stuff?


And I'm just going to very briefly go through some of this stuff.


It's really link building, building up the authority.


That's not the whole part of EAT, but a lot of it is just really high quality link building.


Now sometimes you can get good links from Harrow, help a reporter out.


It's a free way to connect with journalists.


If you can get journalists to cover you, your business, your story in a way that's not like


here's a press release that I wrote, but in a way that's like journalists are excited


to talk about you, those are mentions that can help improve your EAT.


Another thing is data.


I laugh because I tried for like a year to say data instead of data and I just can't


do it.


I thought it was a Canadian thing, but then Dana was here and she says data, so I'm horribly


wrong.


I don't know, but that's one of those things I'm not going to change.


If you have data, let's say you, I said it.


If you have, let's say you're doing SEO for a dentist.


That dentist is going to have all these statistics on maybe what is the first age, the earliest


age that cavities tend to happen in your city and then compare that with other cities.


You can produce these posts that people will want to reference, that people will legitimately


want to recommend.


Google information, this is according to Ahrefs, this is the top linked post on Joy's site


and it is just very simple.


How do you contact Google My Business?


If you have a customer service department in your company, ask your customer service


department what are the questions people keep asking because if they're asking those questions,


it means that they can't find the answer online.


If you create articles that answer those questions, they're going to get referenced by people.


They're going to get links, they're going to get recommendations by experts.


Tools, this is a tool that I put together in a weekend.


My disavow black list probably took me about eight years to put together but this tool


was very, very quick.


You can cross check a link across my black list and see if it's one that I've regularly


disavowed.


This gets me so many links.


It gets me mentions all over the place from other authoritative SEOs.


Tests are an incredible way to get links and mentions on authoritative sites.


This was a podcast episode from John Doherty at Credo and I loved how Brittany was talking


about how Moz de-indexed a bunch of thin content and saw improvements as a result.


Every one of us as SEOs should be running tests and we shouldn't be afraid to talk about


our results.


All the time, I'll publish something and then people say, oh, but this and but that.


It's very easy to get almost shut down and say, I'm not going to publish anything again.


I think we all need to respect the people who are publishing things and go, I might


disagree with this point but this is really good.


Thank you for publishing it.


Don't be afraid to publish your tests and your thoughts on what's going on in your industry.


Then lastly is competitive research.


Not to try to replicate every single link that your clients or your competitors are


getting but rather to see where are they getting links that truly were earned, links that truly


are recommendations.


I want to end with this quote from Bill Hunt, another incredibly smart SEO.


Bill and I did a webinar just recently together and this is what he said and it really, really


made me think.


If I link to you, what I'm basically saying to my readers is I'm inviting you to leave


my website and go visit this website.


That's a big recommendation and I encourage you to think about that as you're building


links.


If you're doing guest posting, not all guest posting is wrong but think about it.


If you have a link in your bio at the end of the guest post, do you think that the owner


of that website put that link there because they're saying this person's really awesome,


you need to go visit their website?


It's a self-made link.


Even if you link from within your own content in the guest post, it's a self-made link and


that's probably not the type of link that Google would consider a recommendation from


an expert.


I want to encourage you to think bigger in terms of getting links that are truly recommendations


from other people and that will help build up your authority in terms of EAT, which is


probably one of the biggest factors of EAT.


Again, there are many other factors that we can talk about but if you can get this, if


you can get this point that you can get people to link to you because they want to and not


because they've been paid to or they've been given this content but because they say this


stuff is so good I need to link to it, then that's key.


Because I haven't had a cat gif in a while and I always put lots of cat gifs in, this


is an inbred cat.


I want to thank you again so much for this.


This is me at my first MozCon.


I'm trying to think of a good, there's a joke in here somewhere because I've learned what


to eat since then and lost a lot of weight.


Nobody got the joke.


Sad.


Oh, some of you are getting it.


Again, I really want to encourage any of you who are trying to build EAT and trying to


accomplish something for yourself or for your clients, it can be done.


6 Techniques to Dramatically Upgrade the Quality of Your Presentation - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


This week we're going to chat a little bit about presentation creation and presentation


delivery.


Why?


Well because so many of us as marketers need to go and make pitches to our teams, to our


clients, to our companies, and externally.


My experience has been that an overwhelming majority of marketers have some interest in


being able to give great public talks.


I want to help you do that today.


I want to help you feel less uncomfortable.


These are techniques that I've used to, generally speaking, upgrade and do well with my presentations.


I think you'll find a lot of these apply to you as well.


The first one is really important.


This is basically when I deliver information here on Whiteboard Friday, one of the things


that you might notice is that I try deliberately not to present stuff that is super obvious


and already well known throughout the industry.


My goal is really to say, hey, what is something that less than 20% of the audience who's going


to be watching Whiteboard Friday is already aware of?


Now let me try and present that information.


Because it's really not interesting.


If the tips that I gave you today, for example, were things like, work on your disfluencies


so that you don't stutter and say, make sure you practice the night before.


Make sure that your font is at least 30 point type.


You should turn off this video.


It's not that it's bad advice.


It's fine advice.


It's even good advice.


But you already know it.


And so it's annoying to have to listen to it again and again.


This is true in your presentations as well.


And so many folks, when they're asked to give a talk about something in the web marketing


space, start with the fundamentals and the basics, the things that everybody already


knows or that are so intuitive that they're just not that helpful.


And look, when you see something that, let's say this is a conversion rate optimization


presentation.


And so my little friend over here, Bob the not so good presenter, is giving a talk and


he's got this slide called make clear calls to action.


And then he shows like an ugly thing where you can't really see what the call to action


is and one that's a very clear call to action.


Super obvious advice.


Advice that anyone who has done any degree of optimization around conversion rates knows


and learned years ago.


This presentation, unless it is to someone who has no experience with web marketing,


is probably going to put you to sleep or drive you to get on your phone or go out of the


room.


On the other hand, this is something I caught today from Joanna Weebie on Copy Hackers,


test text link calls to action versus buttons on your mobile sites in particular.


Oh, really?


Text link calls to action?


I would think a button would convert better.


But it turns out there's some data out there that suggests that in some cases it looks


like the text link works better, you better try it.


Maybe that's something to add to your testing repertoire in the future.


Aha, that is new information.


I did not know that before.


So this obvious information turns people off.


It makes you disconnect from the presentation.


This new information, new, non-obvious, it's awesome.


It's heaven.


That's what we're all looking for when we try and get content.


This is not just true, by the way, for presentations.


It's particularly powerful for presentations, but this is true of virtually any content


you create that is designed to be educational or informative.


Second, never show multiple elements of information on a slide before you talk about them.


Unfortunately, I can't do that with Whiteboard Friday.


So Whiteboard Friday, all the information's already up there.


You could read ahead.


I'm going to count on you not to.


But in a presentation, this gets so, so annoying, and it really distracts from a speaker.


And they put up a slide like this.


Here's the different public relations channels that you should test.


And they've got them listed out.


And the person, right, Bob, my bad presenter, is talking about number one, but what are


we all doing?


We're all reading number four.


We're all reading ahead.


We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Bob, we already know you put up the slide, so we've read ahead.


We don't care what you have to say about one through four.


Like we're disconnecting.


Instead, Bob could do one of two things.


Either he could show only one and not show two, three, and four, and then animate in,


right?


Animate in two, three, and four.


Like here, I'm going to talk about this one, and now we're done talking about that.


And look, here's number two.


Now we're going to start talking about that one.


Or, and I like this way better, because you just get so much more room to be visual and


to present something well, you can say, hey, we're going to talk about four public relations


channels you should test.


Slide one shows off number one.


And maybe I can call it out specifically.


I'm going to show you product hunt, and I'm going to show you how submission works, and


I'm going to show you how the voting systems work, and how people try to game it and it


doesn't work, and da da da da da.


That is a great way to go.


Now I go to slide two.


That shows the next piece of information.


I can't tell you the percentage of presenters who screw this up and show a list of bullet


points, God forbid, or even just this visual system where they put all the information


that they're going to talk about for five minutes on one slide.


It just kills it.


Kills it.


Makes us all read ahead and destroys the drama and the attention.


Third one.


If you possibly can, when you're speaking to an audience, try to customize your examples


specifically to them rather than saying, hey, I'm just going to take a broad approach.


I know this is tough.


I struggle with this myself because I give presentations over and over again.


But what I'm generally urging you to do is to find intersections of one of three things.


Things that are highly relevant to your audience.


That could be relevant in terms of it's relevant to their professional work or to the website


or the organization they work with.


It could be relevant to their geography.


I find that this works tremendously well when I go places and I have examples that are specific


to their geography, like I was speaking in Raleigh recently, Raleigh, North Carolina,


which is near Duke University in Durham and they have the Duke Lemur Center.


I actually went and visited the Lemur Center and I got to see lots of awesome Lemurs jumping


around.


Very cool.


I talked about this in my presentation in Raleigh, which got people like, wow, cool,


and they were tweeting about it.


It was great.


Or shared passions.


Things that you know you share in common.


We have a collective love of grilling steak.


I am going to talk about grilling steak because I think that's an example that could be relevant


and speaks to many people.


Apologies to my vegetarian and vegan friends out there.


These examples can be done in a bunch of ways.


You can do them with your search queries that you might show off.


You can do them with good versus bad practices that you might be showing off.


You can do it just as a pure visual tool.


If you have geographic stuff that is relevant to the area you're in and you need visuals


for your presentation, that's a good way to go.


Social accounts that you're doing.


Content examples that you're doing.


Whatever it is, you can make it relevant to that audience.


Make it feel like there's some resonance.


Make it feel like you cared enough to change up or to customize your presentation to speak


to them specifically.


Just one caveat of this.


Don't pander.


Be very cautious against pandering or against assuming that you understand something.


If I'm going to a foreign country and I know very little about it, I don't assume.


I just say, hey, I looked up things to do in Milan or in Venice and I found this particular


art show and so I went there and here was my experience around it.


Rather than saying, oh, well, I know you Italians love pasta and so...


Don't assume.


Be careful about getting generic or racist.


Number four.


In your presentations, try to create conflict.


I know a lot of us have conflict avoidance, but what you want to do is you want to create


a storyline.


A storyline people can pay attention to, that they care about, that they're interested in.


That means if you can craft your story or even some part of your presentation to have


a villain, a hero, and a struggle between them.


These can be metaphorical heroes and villains.


We don't literally need Darth Vader and Luke.


From there, we can follow that classic story arc where we introduce the characters, we


talk about the conflict and introduce that.


We make the case of why the hero is winning or should win against the villain or what


the hero can do or what the hero did do and then we suggest action or close out with some


recommendation around our presentation to help make it actionable.


Villains can be a lot of things.


Villains can be a lack of data.


It could be poor communication.


Villains could be unmotivated people on a team or people who don't care about your problem.


They could be a crap strategy or a literal villain like a competitor or a market behemoth


in your field.


All those kinds of things.


Heroes could be tools.


They could be your team or you yourself.


They could be a new process.


A hero could be an organization or hopefully something that people can cheer for.


They want to get and be like, oh man, I want to see the Duke Lemur Center have lots of


success because Lemurs are adorable and they're endangered.


Nobody doesn't cheer for Lemurs.


Okay, Lemur, good hero, bad villain.


Give actionable takeaways.


Number five is give actionable takeaways.


If you can, avoid broad generic advice.


I see presenters do this in virtually every field.


They get up on stage and they talk about, hey, here was this problem.


Maybe they even do a great job with creating that conflict.


And then they get to their suggestions section, their takeaways, and it is better communication


is good.


You should work on better communication.


What are you telling me?


How does that help me?


Versus, I saw this great piece a couple days ago on Twitter.


It was a talk that was given, I think it was at First Round Capital or Open View Venture


Partners about radical candor.


What was great about it was that they had, the woman who was giving it had drawn a diagram


of how when you combine caring personally about the people on your team with challenging


them directly, you get this radical candor.


It's both empathetic and very transparent.


That improves communication.


Now you've not told me to do this, you've told me how to do it.


And you've shown me the terrible ways not to do it.


Like don't not care personally but do challenge directly, that's just obnoxious, aggressive


behavior.


And don't just care personally but not challenge directly, that's ruinous empathy.


Great examples all across here.


I like this format.


If you can fill in these blanks, I think you're going to have success here.


You used to do X but after I share Y, you'll switch to doing Z and get better results.


You'll use Y to do Z and get better results than what you were getting with X.


If you can answer this sentence, you're going to be in great shape.


Number six, last one here.


I try to always assume knowledge rather than assuming that people don't know something.


One of the things that I found is that as I'm giving a presentation, if I start to explain


the deep technical aspects of something without just assuming that my audience knows it or


that they can get by without it, it gets boring.


It gets boring fast and the presentation moves slowly and it's just not fun to listen to.


It's annoying.


So what I've started doing over the last few years is essentially assuming that knowledge


but then calling it out specifically.


Let's say I'm presenting a slide like this talking about how pogo sticking, long clicks


versus short clicks and that kind of stuff, could be hurting your site on SEO.


Then I'll say, is anyone in the audience not familiar or hasn't heard of pogo sticking


before?


Just raise your hand, look around.


If there's a few hands that go up, I'll say, oh, okay, great.


Let me give a brief explanation.


What I've done there is not even when I am speaking to an audience where I'm confident,


highly confident that 90% or 70% of the audience has never heard of pogo sticking because they're


not deep into SEO or whatever.


I still do this.


The reason is that that 30% who does know what it is, they are way more understanding,


way more empathetic, way more welcoming of a discussion that takes two or three minutes


from me about what pogo sticking is after I've called it out like, hey, are there people


who don't know?


And then they see fellow audience members and they're like, oh, good.


Well, it's good that he's explaining it to everyone and I appreciate that.


As opposed to like, oh, God, he's going to drone on about this thing that I've already


heard 10 times and I totally know what it is.


Why is he wasting my time?


It's about creating that relationship with the audience and between the audience members


to draw in that empathy and to keep that presentation flowing.


All right, gang, hopefully you've enjoyed these and I actually have a list of a bunch


more for you in another blog post that I'm going to share at the end of this Whiteboard


Friday.


You can check that out.


It has some of my presentation hacks for getting better scores.


We will see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Hey Moz fans, welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Today we are talking about SEO in 2020.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

What does that look like?


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

How have things changed?


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Do we need to be optimizing for favicons and births?


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

We definitely don't.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

But here are some of the things that I feel we should be keeping an eye on.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

To cover your bases with foundational SEO will continue to be incredibly important in


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Basic things like title tags, meta descriptions, alt, all of the basic SEO 101 things.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

There's been some conversations in the industry lately about alt text and things like that


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

nature where Google is getting so good at figuring out and knowing what's in an image


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

why would we necessarily need to continue providing alt text.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

You have to remember we need to continue to make the web an accessible place.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

For accessibility purposes we should absolutely continue to do those things.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

But I do highly suggest you check out Google's visual API and play around with that to see


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

how good they've actually gotten.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

It's pretty cool.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Schema markup will continue to be really important.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

FAQ schema, breadcrumbs, business info, the news schema that now is occurring in voice


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

results is really interesting.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

I think we will see this space continue to grow and you can definitely leverage those


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

different markup types for your website.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Just to keep in mind there's going to be a lot of articles and research and information


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

coming at you about where things are going, what you should do to prepare.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

I want you to take a strategic stance on your industry and what's important in your space.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

While I might suggest page speed is going to be really important in 2020, is it for


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

your industry?


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

We should still worry about these things and still continue to improve them, but if you're


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

able to take a clear look at the ranking factors and what appears to be a factor for your specific


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

space you can better prioritize your fixes and leverage industry information to help


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

you focus.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

I guess that's what I'm saying.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

So something to think about there.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

National SERPs will no longer be reliable.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

This has been the case for a while.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

We need to localize search results and rankings to get an accurate and clear picture of what's


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

going on in search results.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

I was going to put up here EAT and kind of cross it off.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

A lot of people feel EAT is a huge factor moving forward.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Just for the case of this post, it's always been a factor.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

It's been that way for the last 10 plus years and we need to continue doing that stuff despite


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

these various updates.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

I think it's always been important and it will continue to be so.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Write good and useful content for people.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

This helps optimize your text for natural language processing.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

It helps make it more accessible and friendly for BERT.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

While you can't necessarily optimize for something like BERT, you can just write really great


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

content that people are looking for.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Understand and fulfill searcher intent.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

To keep in mind that there's oftentimes multi-intent.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

One thing to think about this space is we've kind of gone from very, very specific keywords


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

to this richer understanding of what is the intent behind these keywords.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

How can we organize that and provide even better value in content to our visitors?


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

One way to go about that is to consider Google houses the world's data.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

They know what people are searching for when they look for a particular thing in search.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Put your detective glasses on and examine what is it that they are showing for a particular


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

keyword.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Put a common theme throughout the pages and tailor your content and your intent to solve


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

for that.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

You could write the best article in the world on DIY Halloween costumes.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

But if you're not providing those visual elements that you so clearly see in a Google search


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

result page, you're never going to rank on page one.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Just keep that in mind moving forward.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

This plays well into the entity and topical understanding.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Again, we've gone from keywords and now we want to have this richer, better awareness


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

of keyword buckets.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

What are those topical things that people are looking for in your particular space?


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

What are the entities, the people, places, or things that people are investigating in


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

your space?


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

How can you better organize your website to provide some of those answers and those structures


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

around those different pieces?


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

That's incredibly important and I look forward to seeing where this goes in 2020.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Optimize for featured snippets.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Featured snippets are not going anywhere.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

They're here to stay and the best way to do this is to find the keywords that you currently


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

rank on page one for that also have a featured snippet box.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

These are your opportunities.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

If you're on page one, you're way more apt to potentially steal or rank for a featured


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

snippet.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

One of the best ways to do that is to provide really succinct, beautiful, easy to understand


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

summaries, takeaways, etc.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Kind of mimic what other people are doing but obviously don't copy or steal any of that.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Really fun space to explore and get better at in 2020.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Invest in visuals.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

We see Google putting more authority behind visuals, whether it be in search or you name


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

it.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

It is incredibly valuable for your SEO, whether it be unique images or video content that


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

is organized in a structured way where Google can provide those sections in that video search


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

result.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

You can do all sorts of really neat things with visuals.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Cultivate engagement.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

This is good anyways and we should have been doing this before.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Gary was quoted as saying, comments are better for onsite engagement than social signals.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

I will let you interpret that how you will.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

I think it goes to show that engagement and creating this community is still going to


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

be incredibly important moving forward into the future.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

Repurpose your content.


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

This is so important and it will help you excel even more in 2020 if you find your top


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

performing web pages and you repurpose them into maybe a slide share, maybe a YouTube


#WhiteboardFriday: SEO for 2020

video, maybe various pins on Pinterest, answers on Quora.