You already contribute to Time Out.


Mission SEO Impossible - Whiteboard Friday

You're already a contributor to Tom's Guide or Android Headlines or whatever it is.


Could you do this independent research?


We'll pay you whatever the results you find.


We'll pay you regardless, and that can be quite successful.


Number four, if you need to do it yourself but you don't want to keep it on your own


site, you could use a microsite.


So creating a site like, if I'm Q over here and I'm x versus y versus q.com, I'm not sure


the exact match domain is precisely the route I'd take, but conceivably that microsite can


perform well in these searches, and there are several examples, few and far between


though they are, of this strategy working.


And then the fifth one is hard, but certainly it's something that a lot of folks think about,


which is to win all the lists.


So if I want to rank in best Broadway shows, well, maybe I could just be Hamilton.


If I want to win at Compare Headphones, maybe I could invent that patent on the noise-canceling


headphones that Bose have, which, by the way, win three out of five of these.


If I want to win the full contact versus clear bit, well, I need the features and the functionality


and the things that these reviewers are using in order to win.


There's almost always a bunch of objective criteria that you can identify by looking


through these SERPs and related SERPs to figure out what you need to do.


The challenge is it's not just a marketing or an SEO or a content problem.


Now it becomes a product and a positioning and oftentimes an engineering problem as well


in order to have that win.


But now you've got the strategies, hard though it may be, this is not impossible.


It's just difficult.


All right, look forward to your comments, and we'll see you again next week for another


edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Page Speed Optimization - Whiteboard Friday

Hey Moz fans!


Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Today we are going over all things PageSpeed and really getting to the bottom of why it


is so important for you to be thinking about and working on as you do your work.


At the very fundamental level, I am going to briefly explain just how a webpage is loaded.


That way we can wrap our heads around why all this matters.


A user goes to a browser, puts in your website, and there is a DNS request.


This points at your domain name provider, so maybe GoDaddy.


This points to your server where your files are located.


This is where it gets interesting.


The DOM starts to load all of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.


Very rarely does this one pull all of the needed scripts or needed code to render or


load a webpage.


Typically the DOM will need to request additional resources from your server to make everything


happen.


This is where things start to slow down your site.


So having that background knowledge I hope will help in us being able to triage some


of these issues.


What are some of the most common culprits?


First and foremost is images.


Large images are the biggest culprit of slow loading webpages.


Posting can cause issues, plugins, apps, widgets, basically any third party script as well can


slow down load time.


Your theme and any large files beyond that can really slow things down as well.


Redirects, the number of hops needed to get to a webpage will slow things down.


And then JavaScript, which we'll get into in a second.


All these things can be a culprit.


So we're going to go over some resources, some of the metrics and what they mean, and


then what are some of the ways that you can improve your page speed today.


The primary resources I have listed here are Google tools and Google suggested insights.


I think what's really interesting about these is we get to see what their concerns are as


far as page speed goes and really start to see the shift towards the user.


We should be thinking about that anyway, but first and foremost, how is this affecting


people that come to your site?


And then secondly, how can we also get the dual benefit of Google perceiving it as higher


quality?


We know that Google suggests a website to load anywhere between two to three seconds.


The closer the better, obviously, but that's sort of where the range is.


And I also highly suggest you take a competitive view of that.


So put your competitors into some of these tools and benchmark your speed goals against


what's competitive in your industry.


I think that's a cool way to kind of go into this.


Chrome User Experience Report.


This is Chrome real user metrics.


And unfortunately, it's only available for larger popular websites, but you get some


really good data out of it.


It's housed on BigML, so some basic SQL knowledge is needed.


Lighthouse, one of my favorites, is available right in Chrome DevTools.


So if you're on a web page and you click Inspect Element and you open up Chrome DevTools to


the far right tab where it says Audits, you can run a Lighthouse report right in your browser.


And what I love about it is it gives you very specific examples and fixes that you can do.


A fun fact to know is it will automatically be on the simulated fast 3G.


And notice their focus on mobile, right, on mobile users on 3G.


I like to switch that to applied fast 3G because this is an actual, it has Lighthouse do an


actual run of that load.


So it takes a little bit longer, but it seems to be a little bit more accurate.


Good to know.


PageSpeed Insights is really interesting.


They have now incorporated Chrome User Experience Report, but if you're not one of those large


sites, it's not even going to measure your actual page speed.


It's going to look at how your site is configured and provide feedback according to that and


score it.


So just something good to be aware of.


Still provides good value.


Test Your Mobile Website Speed and Performance.


I don't know what the title of this is.


If you do, please comment down below.


But it's located on testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com.


And this one's really cool because it tests the mobile speed of your site.


And if you scroll down, it directly ties it into ROI for your business or your website.


So we see Google leveraging real world metrics, right, tying it back to what's the percentage


of people you're losing because your site is this slow.


That's a brilliant way to sort of get us all on board and fighting for some of these improvements.


Pingdom and GT metrics are non-Google products or Google tools, but super helpful as well.


So what are some of the metrics?


We're going to go over FirstPaint, which is basically just the first non-blank paint on


a screen.


So it could be just the first pixel change.


That initial change is FirstPaint.


First Contentful Paint is when the first content appears.


This might be part of the nav or the search bar or whatever it might be.


That's the First Contentful Paint.


First Meaningful Paint is when primary content is visible, when you sort of get that reaction


of, oh, yeah, this is what I came to this page for.


That's First Meaningful Paint.


Time Interactive is when it's visually usable and engageable.


So we've all gone to a web page and it looks like it's done, but we can't quite use it


yet.


That's where this metric comes in.


So, when is it usable for the user?


And again, notice how user-centric even these metrics are.


Really, really neat.


The DOM Content Loaded, this is when the HTML is completely loaded and parsed.


So some really good ones to keep an eye on and just to be aware of in general.


Some ways to improve your page speed, HTTP2 can definitely speed things up as to what


extent you have to sort of research that and test.


Preconnect, prefetch, preload, really interesting and important in speeding up a site.


We see Google doing this on their SERPs.


So if you inspect the element, you can see Google prefetching some of the URLs so that


it has it faster for you if you were to click on some of those results.


You can similarly do this on your site.


So it helps to load and speed up that process.


Caching is so, so important.


Definitely do your research and make sure that's set up properly.


Same with CDNs, so valuable in speeding up a site, but you want to make sure that your


CDN is set up properly.


Probably easiest and probably quickest way for you to speed up your site today is really


just to compress those images.


It's such an easy thing to do.


There's all sorts of free tools available for you to compress them.


Optimizilla is one.


You can even use free tools on your computer, save for web and compress properly.


You can also minify resources.


So it's really good to be aware of what minification, bundling and compression does.


So you can have some of these more technical conversations with developers or with anyone


else working on the site.


So this is sort of a high level overview of PageSpeed.


There's a ton more to cover, but I would love to hear your input and your questions and


comments down below in the comment section.


And I really appreciate you checking out this edition of Whiteboard Friday.


And I will see you all again soon.


Thanks so much.


How Google May Use Knowledge of Surfer & Searcher Behavior to Impact Rankings - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week, let's chat about some things that Google is learning about web searchers and


web surfers that may be impacting the ranking.


So I was pretty psyched to see a patent a few weeks ago that had been granted, actually,


to Google, so filed a while before that.


That patent came from Navneet Panda, who, as many in the SEO space may remember, is


also the engineer for whom the Panda update from Google was named after.


Bill Slosky did a great analysis of the patent on his website, and you can check that out,


along with some of the patent diagrams themselves.


Patents can be a little confusing and weird, especially with language, but this one had


some surprising clarity to it and some potentially obvious applications for web marketers, too.


So in this case, Googlebot here, I've anthropomorphized him, my Googlebot there, nicely, is thinking


about the queries that are being performed in Google's search engine and basically saying,


like, huh, if I see lots of people searching for things like find email address, email


address tool, email finder, and then I also see a lot of search queries similar to those


but with an additional branded element, like voila Norbert email tool or Norbert email


finder or how to find email Norbert or even things like email site colon voilanorbert.com.


Googlebot might actually say, hmm, lots of searchers who look for these kinds of queries


seem to be also looking for this particular brand.


You can imagine this in tons and tons of ways, right?


So lots of people searching for restaurants also search for Yelp.


Lots of people searching for hotels also add in queries like TripAdvisor.


Lots of people searching for homes to buy also add in Zillow, right?


These brands that essentially get known and combined and perform very well in these non-branded


searches, one of the ways that Google might be thinking about that is because they see


a lot of branded search that includes the unbranded words around that site.


And so in Panda's site quality patent, what's described, and Navneet Panda wasn't the only


author on this patent but one of the ones we recognize, what's described is essentially


that this algorithm is, well, not algorithm, very simplistic equation.


I'm sure much more simplistic than what Google's actually using if they are actually using


this.


However, when it comes to patents, they usually way oversimplify that type of stuff because


they don't want to get exactly what they're doing out there in the public.


But they have this equation that looks like this.


Number of unique searchers for the brand or keyword X.


So essentially this is kind of a searches searchers.


They're trying to identify only unique quantities of people doing it, looking at things like


IP address and device and location and all of that to try and identify just the unique


people who are performing this.


Divided by the number of unique searches for the non-branded version.


So branded divided by non-branded equals some sort of site quality score for keyword X.


So if a lot more people are performing a search for TripAdvisor plus California Vacations


than are performing searches for just California Vacations, then the site quality score for


TripAdvisor when it comes to the keyword California Vacations might be quite high.


You can imagine that if we take another brand, let's say a brand that folks are less familiar


with, I don't know, WhereToGoInTheWorld.com, and there's very, very few searches for that


brand plus California Vacations and there's lots of searches for the unbranded version,


well the site quality score for WhereToGoInTheWorld.com is going to be much lower.


I don't even think that's a real website, but regardless.


Now I want to add one more wrinkle onto this, which is I think one of the things that struck


me as being almost like obvious but not literally mentioned in this specific patent was my theory


that this also applies to clickstream data.


You can see this happening obviously already in personalization and personalized search,


but I think it might be happening in non-personalized search as well.


That is essentially through Android and through Chrome, which I've drawn these lovely logos


just for you.


Google knows basically where everyone goes on the web and what everyone does on the web.


They see this performance.


They can look and see, hey, the clickstream for a lot of people's processes, a searcher


goes, searches for find email address tool, and then they find this resource from Distilled


and Distilled mentions Rob Ousby's account because I think it was from Rob Ousby that


that original resource came out and they follow him and then they follow me and they see that


I tweeted about Voila Norbert and voila, they make it to voilanorbert.com's website where


their search ends.


They're no longer looking for this information.


They've now found a source that sort of answers their desire, their intent.


And Google might go, huh, you know, why not just rank this?


Why rank this one when we could just put this there?


Because this seems to be the thing that is answering the searcher's problem, that's taking


care of their issue.


This is tough for marketers.


I think both of these, right, the query formatting and the potential clickstream uses suggest


a world in which building up your brand association and building up the stream of traffic to your


website that's solving a problem not just for searchers but for potential searchers


and people with that issue, whether they search or not, is part of SEO.


I think that's going to mean that things like branding and things like attracting traffic


from other sources, from social, from email, from content, from direct, from offline and


word of mouth, that all of those things are going to become part of the SEO equation.


If we don't do those things well in the long term, we might do great SEO, kind of classic


old school keywords and links and crawl and rankings SEO and miss out on this important


piece that's on the rise.


So I'm looking forward to some great comments and your theories as well, and we'll see you


again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Daily SEO Fix: Investigating Keyword Cannibalization- Episode #3

Hi there, in this video I'll talk about solutions for keyword cannibalization issues on your


site.


There are a number of ways you can tackle cannibalization.


The first is 301 redirection.


If you have two very similar pages and believe you only need one or the other, a 301 redirect


is a good option.


The best practice is to redirect that page that has less traffic and fewer backlinks


to the other page that is potentially performing better.


Canonicalization is another solution to look at if all your pages contain cannibalization


issues.


You can use canonical tags to indicate to search engines that a particular page is more


important than others on your site.


For example, your product page would be your primary page, as that is where you want people


to go, rather than your blog post about that product.


Page optimization is another solution that can be used for pages suffering from cannibalization.


If both pages answer different user intents, make sure you optimize both pages to do so.


For example, a product page for sleep masks can be optimized with keywords such as buy


or even descriptive words such as pink or fluffy.


A blog post describing the benefits of sleeping masks may use keywords such as sleep better


or block out light.


Update areas such as the title, h1, h2, descriptions, image tags, etc.


Content consolidation is the last solution we have.


Consider consolidating part of the entire content of a page into another.


Once you do this, it's up to you to decide whether to keep both pages or to redirect


one to the other.


I hope these solutions help you in your future decanibalization efforts.


Why It's a Bad Idea to Only Create Content for Your Specific Target Audience - Whiteboard Friday

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


This one comes to us via submission from email.


This is a question from Michael.


No other details given, which is totally fine, Michael.


So he wouldn't know since he's working on a content strategy, working on a new blog,


and having conversations with his manager and his team about, hey, should we be writing


only extremely focused, narrowly focused content for our specific target audience, or should


we be trying to branch out and broaden so that we can reach a bigger audience or a new


audience?


And I think this is a fair question, a great question that happens all the time in content


strategy and actually in link building strategy discussions around the SEO and content world.


And so I think it's actually a pretty bad idea.


Most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time it's a pretty bad idea to be extremely


narrowly focused on exclusively your audience, your paying customers, or the audience that


you're trying to get to pay for your products or services.


And I'll explain why.


So general goals that we usually have around content marketing and content as it relates


to SEO and web marketing more broadly is that we want something that potentially directly


converts some customers, convinces people to buy from us, convinces them that our products


or our services or our knowledge or whatever it is is the best in our field.


We want content that's going to help us earn press, amplification, and links, certainly


so that we can rank higher for all sorts of things, so that we can reach new audiences,


so that we get influencers on our side.


We're looking to reach a brand new audiences, broad, hopefully, new audiences, so that we


can capture among that new audience some segment or sliver which is going to turn out to be


great customers for us now or in the future or might be influential to our customers now


or in the future.


And finally, we might be trying to grow our brand's awareness and authority.


We're just trying to get seen by more folks, more people aware of us so that we can do


all sorts of clever things in the future like have higher click-through rates because people


are familiar with us already, so that we can do retargeting and remarketing, so that we


have more brand credibility of all kinds in all sectors.


Usually most content goals fall into one of these or several of them.


Now, there's overlap between them.


I haven't perfectly illustrated this with a great Venn diagram, but in here, there's


lots of overlap between these different goals, right?


You could have a piece of content that is both designed to earn press and amplification


links and is reaching a broad new audience.


Or you might have some content that is directly converting customers that maybe also has some


link amplification sorts of overlap.


It's pretty tough to overlap anything else with directly converting customers, but the


other three definitely easier to do overlap.


However, most of the content you're going to produce is going to have a hard time doing


anything more than maybe one or two of these.


If you're trying to do three or all four at the same time, you are going to struggle significantly.


This is why folks who say, I want content that's going to go viral that directly converts


my customers, that also reaches influencers and helps me reach a broad new group of folks,


you're asking too much from the same piece of content.


It's going to be a real, real challenge.


If you're only doing that content that's hyper-specifically targeting these directly converting customers,


you're going to run into some big problems.


First off, heavy competition.


It tends to be the case if you're trying to earn that audience's attention, so too are


all your competitors.


They're probably trying in very, very similar ways.


It's often a competitive advantage to actually be a little bit broader and to branch out


of that.


You are usually ignoring great link opportunities from websites and press and blogs and events


and all sorts of places that you could have earned had that content had a broader focus


or just a broader appeal in general.


It could be because you hyper-focused your data or your study on too narrow a market


that only served your specific customer set, when in fact, had you gone a little bit broader,


there would have been a lot of press in industry coverage sites that might have written about


you.


It could be that you've only written about your customers' problems, when in fact, if


you'd written about the problem a little more generally, you might have had the chance to


reach bloggers and people on Twitter and folks on LinkedIn and folks through Facebook and


those types of places.


Finally, you're probably missing potential customers and influencers that are outside


what your current sphere of influence is.


Whatever that sphere is, the content that is most targeted at your audience is going


to have a very tough time making this any bigger than it is.


The content that's more broadly focused, especially if it does well, is going to help expand this


sphere so that you reach more of these people over here with that new expanded sphere.


My recommendations, instead of making your content way narrowly focused, I would try


and think broader and I would think about it in these ways.


First off, try and nail down the actual content goals with your team, your manager, or your


client so that everyone agrees, hey, we want to do some of this, we want to do some of


this, and we're looking to do a lot of this.


If that's what we know our content is trying to do, it's pretty easy to have the conversation


about why we shouldn't just create content here.


Next, you should try and distribute those broad versus narrow versus hyper-specific


content efforts.


Distribute meaning say, hey, we know that we're going to be producing this amount of


content, this is how much of it we want to put effort into to target this segment versus


this segment versus this other segment.


Then we need to establish some cadence, some channels, some of the promotion efforts that


are actually going to fit the goal and the target audience.


You're going to do different kinds of promotion.


It's not just the creation of the content itself and the content strategy, it's the


promotion and the targeting, it's the channels you use, it's how often you put it out there,


and it's where you put it on your site.


It could be that you have a hyper-specific focused blog and then you have articles that


are broader or your blog is very broad and then you have white papers that are very,


very focused on your target audience.


Both ways are totally fine.


Finally, you've got to use the right metrics to measure your progress against these goals.


If you're trying to reach a broad new audience, you're using things like visits and exposure


and engagement.


If you're trying to grow press amplification and links, well, you're looking at links,


you're looking at coverage, you're looking at mentions.


If you're trying to directly convert customers, you're going to be looking at conversion events


and whether that content falls somewhere in the conversion path over the course of time.


You do these things right, I think you're going to have a much more successful conversation


when it comes time to say, should we create broad content or specific hyper-focused content?


All right, everyone, look forward to your comments and we'll see you again next week


for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Hyper Local Keywords - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about hyper-local keyword research.


Now this is a big challenge not only for hyper-local focused businesses, but also for all kinds


of websites that are trying to target very small regions and many of them with their


keyword research and keyword targeting on-page optimization.


So the problem tends to be that most keyword research tools, and this includes things like


Google AdWords tool, it includes Moz's Keyword Explorer or keywordtool.io or Ubersuggest


or anybody you want to use, most of them are relying on volume data.


So what happens is when you see a bunch of keyword suggestions, you type in squim for


example, squim is a tiny town on Washington's peninsula, so across the Puget Sound from


where we are here in Seattle, and squim has a population of like 6,500 people or something


like that, so very tiny.


And so most searches related to squim have no volume data in any of these tools, and


as a result you don't see a lot of information about how can I target these keywords, what


are the right ones to go after, you don't know whether a keyword has zero searches a


month or whether it has four searches a month, and those four searches are exactly who you


want to get in front of.


And this is really problematic.


There are three solutions that we've seen professional SEOs use and that some of us


here at Moz use and the Moz local team uses, and these can be real handy for you.


So first one is to basically replicate the data by using keyword information that comes


from similar regions nearby.


So let's say, okay, here we are in squim, Washington, population 6,669, but Port Angeles


is only a few miles away, I think maybe a couple dozen miles away, but its population


is more like 20,000.


So we've got five times, four or five times the keyword volume for most searches probably,


this is going to include some outlying areas.


So now we can start to get data.


Not everything is going to be zero searches per month, and we can probably backtrack that


to figure out what squim's data is going to be like.


Same thing goes for Riordoso versus Santa Fe.


Riordoso almost 8,000, but Santa Fe's population is almost ten times larger at 70,000, or Stowe,


about 4300, tiny little town.


Burlington is nearby, ten times bigger at 42,000.


Great.


So now I can take these numbers and I can intuit what the relative volumes are, because


the people of Burlington are probably similar in their search patterns to the people of


Stowe.


There's going to be a few differences, but for most hyperlocal searches this will work.


Second one, Google Auto Suggest can be really helpful here.


So Google Suggest does not care if there's one search a month or one search in the last


year versus zero search in the last year.


They'll still show you something.


Well, zero searches in the last year, they won't show you anything.


But for example, when I search for squim day, I can intuit here because of the ordering


that Google Suggest shows me that squim day spa is more popular than daycare.


Squim by the way sounds like a lovely place to live if you are someone who enjoys few


children and lots of spa time, apparently.


And then day hikes, right?


And so this technique doesn't just work with Google itself.


It will also work with Bing, with Google Maps, and with YouTube.


Another suggestion on this one, you will see different results if you use a mobile device


versus a desktop device, and so you might want to change it up and try your mobile device.


That can give you some different results.


All right, third tactic here, last one, you can use sort of two styles of keyword research.


One is called lexical, which is basically the semantic relationships between words and


phrases.


And then there's related SERP suggestions, which is where a keyword research tool, Moz


Keyword Explorer does this, SEMrush is very popular for this, and there's a few others.


And they will basically show you search terms that the links that came up, right, the search


results that came up for squim daycare also came up in searches for these terms and phrases.


Right?


So, like SERPs that for which your SERP also ranked.


You can see when I search for squim daycare, and then I did this in Keyword Explorer because


I happen to have a Moz Keyword Explorer subscription.


It's very nice of Moz to give me that.


You can see that I used two kinds of suggestions.


One are related to keywords with similar results, right?


So that's the related SERPs, and the other one was based on closely related topics with


like the semantic lexical thing.


And squim daycare has given me great stuff like Banbury School Nursery, right, nearby


town, secondary schools in Banbury, Horton Day Nursery, which is a nursery that's actually


near there, Port Angeles Childcare, Children's Nursery.


So now I'm getting a bunch of keyword suggestions that can potentially be relevant and lead


me down a path.


And when I look at closely related topics, I can see things like – closely related


topics, by the way, what I did is I actually removed the term squim because that was showing


me a lot of things that are particular to that region.


But if I search for daycare, I can see lots of related – closely related topics like


daycare center, childcare, school care, special needs children, preschool programs, after


school programs.


So now I can take all of these and apply the name of the town and get these hyperlocal


results.


This is frustrating still, right?


You don't have nearly the data that you have for much more popular search terms, but this


is a good way to start building that keyword list, targeting, experimenting, and testing


out the on-page work that you're going to need to do to rank for these terms.


And then you'll start to see your traffic grow from these.


Hyperlocal may be small, but it can be powerful, can be very targeted, and can bring you exactly


the customers you're looking for.


So good luck with your targeting out there, and we'll see you again next week for another


edition of Whiteboard Friday.


SEO for Bloggers: How to Nail the Optimization Process for Your Posts - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about blog post SEO, specifically how to nail the on-page


optimization process, the thought process, the strategy process, the content creation


and optimization for a blog post.


So if you are writing a blog, there's a bunch of things that you need to do to be great


at SEO.


And there's some steps that I think you can follow.


This is not one of those things where I'm going to say, oh, you absolutely have to follow


this from end to end for every post that you write, and it's a big formal complex process.


A lot of this can be done in your head before you start writing the post, before you start


creating it.


That's totally okay, right?


This does not have to add a ton of layers of involvement.


But if you use this process as you're creating each post, which I do many, many times, right,


for Whiteboard Friday, this blog post that you're reading and watching right now, and


for all the posts that I write, it can be hugely helpful and eventually transformative


in your ability to get search traffic to your blog.


So let's start.


First off, as you should always do, you should determine what the goal of the post is.


You should have that in your head or written down before you start creating the post, right?


So that could be, hey, with this post, I'm trying to attract a new audience in this particular


sphere, or I'm trying to convince and win over people to my perspective on a particular


topic, or, you know, I'm really trying to promote a product or service with this post,


or share some important news about my organization or my company or something that's happening


in my sphere.


Maybe I'm contributing to a conversation that already exists out in the blogosphere or the


social media world or the news world in your space.


Maybe I want to answer a question or earn influencer amplification.


Whatever it is, make sure you know what it is before you go into the post.


I hate to see folks starting with, you know, step three, like doing keyword research, when


they have no idea what the post's goals are.


Step two, similarly, sorry, one thing before we skip to step two is once you know what


you're trying to do here, determine the metric, the metric or metrics that matter the most


to that goal.


So for example, a metric could be visits, right?


Just raw traffic.


It could be engagement on the post.


It could be comments.


It could be links.


It could be social shares because you're trying to reach a new audience that's on LinkedIn


and you haven't done very well on LinkedIn in the past, but you think this post is perfectly


targeted to that.


Or you're only really trying to get one or two people's attention, particular influencers,


in which case your metric might be did they come and read it?


Did they share it?


If the answer to that is yes, you've accomplished the post's goals, but you need that metric


recorded.


All right, step two, related, determine the audience you're trying to reach with the post,


right?


So that could be potential new readers.


It could be existing loyal fans.


Yeah, he's waving a flag.


Could be influencers, right?


Folks who have the ability to broadcast your message.


And maybe you're not even trying to attract them to broadcast this particular message.


You just want their attention so in the future you can reach them.


Or it might be very specific audience targets, in this case, my backpacker readers, right?


And Moz does that all the time.


For example, I might do a Whiteboard Friday that is specifically for e-commerce websites


or specifically for B2B folks, right?


But I'm focusing on a particular audience target with that content.


Step three, now we're going to do our keyword research because we know what we're trying


to accomplish and who we're trying to reach.


And so we're going to try and find three to five keyword phrases to target.


Why three to five?


Because generally that's what you can reasonably expect to be able to reach with a single blog


post.


And I'll talk a little bit more about on-page optimization in a sec.


I'm looking for, as we've talked about in our keyword research focus Whiteboard Friday,


just a few weeks ago, which you should check out if you haven't already, we want relatively


high volume, low difficulty, high click-through rate opportunity, meaning there's a good number


of people who search for it, it's not that hard to potentially rank for, and there's


not too many other features in the search result that are going to take away from my


potential ability to rank with web content.


If there are, by the way, lots of people who have images or lots of people who have videos


in the search result or lots of news content, then you want to think about how do I get


my post to include those, right?


I might think about, hey, maybe this post should be very visually centric, or maybe


this post should be a video, or maybe this post should try and get into Google News,


and can I get my blog into Google News, and if I can't, maybe I want to find someone


whose platform I can publish on to get into Google News.


All the keywords that you target should have the same searcher intent.


What do I mean by searcher intent?


I mean that the people who search for those three to five terms and phrases are all trying


to accomplish the same goal or very, very similar goals.


An example might be if someone's searching for luxury kids' clothes, that is likely


very, very similar to someone searching for designer children's fashion or haute couture


kids' brands.


They all have the same intent.


They are thinking about purchasing or investigating at least what brands in the fashion space


offer children's clothing, and they're all in the luxury, high-end, haute couture,


high-priced space.


Perfect.


These are all matching that searcher intent.


Step four, I want to conduct my competitive research.


This is where I'm going to go to ask questions like who else is ranking for this keyword.


I can just go to Google, take a look at that, or I could look at the SERPs analysis through


something like Keyword Explorer.


I might also ask who has produced heavily shared content in this space.


Not necessarily who's ranking, but who's had lots of shares and likes on Facebook, on Twitter,


on LinkedIn, on Pinterest, all that kind of stuff.


BuzzSumo is great for this.


You can also use Moz Content's search tool.


I would also ask, once you know the answers to these two, you need to determine, okay,


what is it that's the unique value that I can bring to the table with my blog post?


Unique value meaning not just unique content, right?


Obviously, what you write is going to be different than what other people have written or created,


but how are you providing value that is different from what other people have provided?


Is that because your opinions are very unique?


Is it because you are providing a better experience?


Is it because you're providing that content in a different format?


Is it because you have access to unique research or data?


Whatever those things are, you need to answer that question because we're trying to go above


and beyond what else is out there.


Step five, I'm going to go ahead and create the post.


This is where a lot of that research comes into play because I know what my post goals


are and who I'm targeting and some of the keyword research and what people are looking


for around this topic as well as what's already out there.


I can now make a post that is unique and uniquely valuable.


This is huge because it means that my post has much greater potential to reach its audience


and to perform well and to be perceived by both searchers and search engines as well


as sharers and influencers and folks on social media as much more worthwhile.


I also want to think about in here the types of content that I want.


Written content is pretty obvious for most blog posts, but I should also think about


things like images and graphs or data, video.


Do I want to embed content from other places, maybe SlideShare or I want to embed some rich


media file or maybe I want to link to other places out there.


Maybe some people have produced content on this and I would like to get their attention


and I would like to reference their work, and so I'm going to link over to them.


Maybe I want to embed some quotes or get some quotes from some notable folks about the particular


topic or get other opinions for the piece.


All of that type of stuff I should think about as I create the post.


Step six, this is the on-page SEO portion.


I'm going to take those three to five terms and I'm going to think about one of those


as the primary keyword phrase that I'm targeting.


That's going to be the one that goes exactly matched in the title and the headline and


the URL.


I'm also going to think about two to four secondary keywords that I want to attempt


to wrap into potentially the meta description and image alt tags and the content itself.


I'm going to try and use these keywords intelligently in places like title, URL, meta description,


headline, content, images, all those spots.


Then I want to consider any old URLs that I might redirect here.


Let's say that perhaps I have done a blog post on this topic in the past, six months


ago, or two years ago.


Do I want to redirect that old post to this one?


Are there posts that I should go out there and find or content anywhere on my site or


on any site that I control or influence where I want to link to this content, this new post


that I'm writing, now that I've created it?


This can be helpful for discovery.


It can also be helpful for internal linking, helpful to your audience who's reading your


old stuff, and helpful to search engines to find, index, and hopefully rank your new content.


Step seven, I need some way to do outreach and amplification.


I want to plan for that.


The questions I'm asking here are who do I want to reach?


Who do I think will help me amplify this?


How am I going to target them?


How am I going to reach out to them?


Is it going to be via email?


Is it going to be via Twitter?


Am I going to see them in person?


Do I have a direct relationship?


Do I need an introduction?


Do I want to comment on something that they've done?


Whatever that might be.


When should I do that?


Do I want to do it beforehand because I'm trying to get them to look at the content


or contribute something to it prior, or do I want to do it after I've promoted it, after


I've published it and promoted it?


Why?


Meaning, why is this person going to help me?


What does it do for them or for their audience?


Does it make them look good?


Is it something that in the past they have shared lots of things like this, but this


one is uniquely valuable or better or provides new information that they didn't have before?


You need an answer to all of those questions when you create that plan.


Step eight, I'm going to experiment.


I'm going to learn, and I'm going to iterate on this.


Look, in this process, some of these things, for a big, big post, you might spend a lot


of time on each of these steps very thoroughly.


For a post that's sort of a toss away, quick opinion, I'm trying to write it in an hour


or less and get it published, maybe I'm just thinking about these things in my head and


doing real fast keyword research and targeting, and the rest of it's just a mental model that


I have.


Regardless of that, I'm going to expect that this process is going to be repeated dozens


of times, 30, 40, 50, 70 times even, before I should expect my first success, especially


if you're a new blog, new blogger, and that I'm going to have to do it hundreds of times


before you have a relatively high hit or a high success rate where lots of your posts


are doing well and earning you rankings and ongoing traffic and social shares.


This is not something where you follow this process and you have instant results with


your first post.


That's not the case.


No one has that in blogging.


That's just not how it works.


You're going to launch, promote, analyze, apply the information that you learn, and


launch again.


This process is going to happen over and over.


The more you learn and apply, the better you're going to get at this system.


All right, everyone.


Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we will see you again next week.


How to Craft the Best Damn E-commerce Page on the Web - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy y'all, and welcome to a special edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Ran Fishkin,


I'm the founder of Moz, and today I want to talk with you about how to craft the best


damn ecommerce page on the web. And I'm actually going to be using an example of one of my


very favorite ecommerce pages. That is the Bellroy Slim Wallet page. Now Bellroy, actually


all of their pages, Bellroy makes wallets and they market them online primarily, and


they make some fantastic products. I've been an owner of one for a long time, and it was


this very page that convinced me to buy it. So what better example to use? And so what


I want to do today is walk us through the elements of a fantastic ecommerce page, talk


about some things where I think perhaps even Bellroy could improve, and then walk through


at the very end the process for improving your own ecommerce page. So let's start with


number one, the very first thing, which a lot of folks unfortunately don't talk about,


but is critical to a great ecommerce process and a great ecommerce page, and that is the


navigation at the very top. The navigation at the top needs to do a few things. It's


got to help people understand and know where they are in the site structure, especially


if you have a more complex site. In Bellroy's case, they don't really need to highlight


anything. You know you're on a wallet page that's probably in shop, right? But for Amazon,


this is critically important. For Best Buy, this is hugely important, even for places


like Samsung and Apple, critical to understand where I am in the site structure. I want to


know something about the brand itself, so that if this is the first time that someone


is visiting the website, which is very often the case with ecommerce pages, they're often


entry points for the first exposure that you have to a brand. Let's recall, from what we


know about conversion rate optimization, it is uncommon, unusual for someone to convert


on their first visit to a brand or a website's page, but you can make a great first impression,


and part of that is what your top navigation needs to do. So it should help people identify


with the brand, get a sense for the style and the details of who you are. You need to


know where broadly you can go in the website. Where can I explore from here? If this is


my first visit or if this is my second visit and I'm trying to learn a little bit more


about the company, I want to be able to easily get to places like About, or I want to be


able to easily learn more about their products or what they do, learn more about the potential


solutions, learn more about their collections and what other things they offer me. I also,


especially for e-commerce repeat visitors and for folks who are buying more than one


thing, I want to have this simple navigation around cart. I don't, in fact, love how Bellroy


minimizes this, but you want to make sure that the search bar is there as well. Search


is actually a function for about 10 to 12 percent of visitors on average to e-commerce


pages will use search as their primary navigation function. So if you make that really subtle


or hard to find or difficult to use, the search feature can really limit the impact that you


can have with that group. And then, of course, I want that info about the shopping process


that comes from having the cart. And in Bellroy's case, I love what they do. They actually put


free shipping in the United States in their nav on every page, which I think is one that


clearly for them it must be one of the key questions that they get all the time. I have


no doubt that they've done some A-B testing and optimization to make sure, hey, you know


what? Let's just put it in front of everyone because it doesn't hurt and it helps to improve


our conversion rates. Okay, second up, core product information. Core product information


tends to be that above the fold key part here. In Bellroy's case, it's very minimalist. We're


just talking about a photo of the wallet itself, and then you can click left or right or I


think sometimes it auto scrolls as well on desktop but not mobile. And I can see a lot


more photos of how many cards the wallet can hold and what it looks like in my pants and


how it measures up compared to a ruler and all that kind of stuff. So there's some great


photography in here, and that's important, as well as the name and the price. These core


details may differ from product to product. For example, if you are selling a more complex


piece of technology, the core features may in fact be fairly substantive, and that's


okay, but we are trying to help with this core product information. We're trying to


help people understand what the product is and what it does. So wallet, very, very obvious.


If we're talking about lab equipment for scientific machinery, well, a little more complicated.


We better make sure that we're communicating that. We want visuals that are going to serve


to, in this case I think they do a great job, but comprehensively communicate the positioning,


the positioning of the product itself. So Bellroy is clearly going with minimalist.


They're going with craft, right? They're a small niche shop. They don't do 10,000 things.


They just make wallets, and they are trying to make that very clear. They also are trying


to make their quality a big part of this, and they are trying to make the focus of the


product itself the slimness. And you can really see that as you go into, well, obviously the


naming convention, but also the photography itself, which is showing you just how slim


this wallet can be in comparison to bulky other wallets, right? They take the same number


of cards. They put them in two different kinds of wallets. They show you the thickness, right?


And the Bellroy is very, very slim, and so that's clearly what the positioning is going


for.


We want, potentially here, we might want video or animation, but I'm going to say that this


is only a part of the core content when it truly makes sense. A great example of when


it does make sense would be Zappos. Zappos obviously has their videos for nearly every


shoe and shoe brand that they promote on their website, and they saw tremendous conversion


rate improvements because people had a lot of questions about how it moves and walks


and how it looks with certain pieces of clothing. The detail of having someone explain it to


you as I'm explaining e-commerce pages to you in video form turned out, had a great


impact on their conversion rate.


You might want to test this, but it's also the case that this content, that video or


animation content, might live down below. We'll talk about how that can live in more


of the photos and process at the very bottom at the end of this video. And then, finally,


naming convention, we want price, we want core structural details. I like that Bellroy


here has made their core content very, very slim, just the photos, the name, and the price.


Number three, we need clear options to the path to purchase. This is somewhere where


I think a lot of folks, unfortunately, get torn by the Amazon model. If you are Amazon.com,


which yes, has phenomenal click-through rates, phenomenal engagement rates, phenomenal conversion


rates, but you are not Amazon. Repeat after me, I am not Amazon.


And therefore, one of the things that Amazon does is they clutter this page with hundreds


of different things that you could do. And they've built that up over decades, literally


decades, right? They've built up so that we are all familiar with an Amazon page, e-commerce


page, and what we expect on it. We know there's going to be a lot of clutter. We know there's


going to be a ton of call to actions and other things we could buy and things that are often


bought with this and things that could be bundled with this. And that is fine for Amazon.


It is almost definitely not fine for you unless you are extremely similar to what Amazon does.


And for that reason, I see many, many folks getting dragged in this direction of, hey,


I want to have 10 different calls to action because people might want to X, Y, and Z.


There are ways to do the might want to X, Y, and Z without making those specific calls


to action in the core part of the landing page for the e-commerce product. I'll talk


about those in just a second. But what I do want you to do here is I want you to help


people understand what is available. Quick example, right? You can select the color.


That is the only thing you can do with this wallet. There's no different sizes. There's


no different, you know, materials that they could be made of. There's just color. Color,


check out, and by the way, once again, free shipping. Right? So I am trying to drive them


to the primary action, and that is what this section of your e-commerce page needs to do


a great job of. Make the options clear if there are any and make the path to purchase


really, really simple.


Finally, we're trying to eliminate roadblocks. We're trying to eliminate any questions that


might arise, and we want to eliminate any future frustration. So, for example, one of


the things that I would do here that Bellroy does not do is I would geotarget based on


IP address. So I would look at the IP address of the visitor who's coming to this page,


and I would say, I am pretty sure you are located in Washington state right now. Therefore,


I know that this is the sales tax amount that I need to charge, or Bellroy isn't in Washington


state. I don't need to charge you sales tax. And so I might have a little thing here that


says, sales tax, you know, and then a little dropdown that's pre-populated with Washington


or pre-populated with the zip code if you know that, and zero dollars. Right? That way,


it's predictive. It's saying already, oh, good, I know that the next page I'm going


to click on is going to ask me about sales tax or the page after I enter my credit card


is, and you know what, it's great to have that question answered beforehand. Now, maybe


Bellroy's tested this and they found that it doesn't convert as well, but I would guess


that it probably, probably would convert even better with that messaging on there.


All right. Number four, the detailed descriptions of the features of the product. This is where


a lot of that, the bulk of the content often lives on product pages, on e-commerce pages.


And in this case, they've got a list of features including all sorts of dimension stuff and


how it's built and what it's made from and what it can hold, et cetera, et cetera. What


I'm trying to do here is a few things. I want to help people know what to expect from this


product. I don't want high returns. I want, especially if I'm offering free shipping,


I definitely don't want high returns. I want people to be very satisfied with this product


to know exactly what they're going to get. I want to help them determine if the product


fits their needs, fits what they are trying to accomplish, fits the problem they're trying


to solve. I want to help them lead them to answers quickly for frequently asked questions.


So if I know that lots of people who reach this page have this sort of, oh, gosh, you


know, I wonder what is their delivery process like? How long does it take to get to me because


I kind of need a wallet for this trip that I'm going on and I'm bringing pants that just


won't hold my thick wallet and that's what triggered me to have this, to search for Slim


wallets in Google and that's what led me to this page. Aha, delivery. Great job. You've


answered the question before or as they are asking it and that is really important. We


want answers to the unasked questions before people start to panic in the checkout process.


You can go through this with folks who you say, hey, I want you to imagine that you're


about to buy this. Give me the 10 things in your head. I want you to say out loud everything


that you think when you see this page and you can do this with actual customers, with


customers who are returning, with people who fit your target demographic and target customer


profile but have not yet bought from you, with people who have bought from your competitors


and as you do this, you will find the answers to be very, very similar time after time and


then you can answer them right in this featured content. So, you know, warranty is obviously


another big one. They note that they have a three-year warranty. You can click plus


here. You can get more information. I also like that they answer that unasked question


so when they say, okay, it's 80 millimeters by 95 millimeters. Man, I don't know how big


a millimeter is. I just can't hold that information in my head but look, they have a link. Compare


to others. If you click that, it will show you an overlay comparison of this wallet against


other wallets that they offer and other wallets that other people offer. Awesome. Fantastic.


You are answering that question before I have it. Finally, number five, a lot of the seal


the deal content and when we were talking before about videos or animations or some


of the content that maybe belongs in the featured section or possibly could be around checkout


but doesn't quite reach the level of importance that we've dictated for those, this is where


you can put that content and it can live below the fold, you know, scrolling way down. I


have yet to see the e-commerce page that has suffered from providing too much detail about


things people actually care about. I have seen e-commerce pages suffer from bloating


the page with tons of content that no one cares about, especially as it affects page


load speed which hurts your conversions on mobile and hurts your rankings in Google because


site speed is a real issue. But seal the deal content should help people get really comfortable


and build trust. Right, so if I scroll down here, what I'm seeing is more photos about


how the wallet is made, how people are using it. They call this the nude approach which


cleverly titled, I'm sure it makes for a lot of clicks. The nude approach to building a


wallet, why the leather is so slender, why it adds so little weight and depth, why it


lasts so long, all these kinds of things, right? It's trying to use social proof or


other psychological triggers to get rid of any remaining skepticism. And so if you know


what the elements of skepticism are from your potential buyers, you can answer that in this


deeper content as people get down and through this. Now, all right, you might say to yourself,


these all sound like great things. How do I actually run this process, Rand? And the


answer is embedded in what we just talked about. You're going to need to ask your customers,


your potential customers, your customers who bought from you before and your customers


who did not buy from you but ended up buying from a competitor about these elements. You're


going to need to test, which means that you need some infrastructure, something like an


Unbounce or an Optimizely or your own testing platform, if you feel like building one, your


engineers do, in order to be able to change out elements and see how well they convert,


change out pieces of information. But it is not helpful, it is not helpful to change things


like button color or to change lists of features or to change out the specific photos when


the problem is, overall, you have not solved these problems. If you don't solve these problems,


the best button color in the world will not help your conversion rate nearly enough, which


is why we need to form theories and have hypotheses about what's stopping people from buying.


That should be informed by our real research.


Alright, last element that I'm going to talk about is SEO. SEO for ecommerce pages is based


on only a few very, very simple things. Our SEO elements here are keywords, content, engagement,


links, and, in some cases, freshness. You hit these five and you've basically nailed


it. So keywords, do you call your products the same thing people call your products when


they search for them? If the answer is no, you have an opportunity to improve. Even if


you want to use a branded name, I would suggest combining that with the name that everyone


else calls your things, right? So if this is the Slim Sleeve Wallet, if historically


Bellroy had called this the Sleeve Wallet, I would highly recommend to them, hey, people


are searching for Slim Wallet. How about we find a way to merge those things, right?


Content is around what is on this page, and Google is looking for content that solves


the searcher's problem, the searcher's issue. That means doing all of these things right


and having it in a format that Google can actually read. Video is great. Transcripts


of the video should also be available. Visuals are great. Descriptions should also be available.


Google needs that text content. Engagement, that is going to come from people visiting


this page and not clicking the back button and going back to Google and searching for


other stuff and clicking on your competitors' links. It's going to come from people clicking


that checkout button or browsing deeper in the website and from engaging with this page


by spending time on the site and not bouncing. That's your job and responsibility, and this


stuff can all help. Links come from press. It can come from blogs. It can come from some


high-quality directories. Be very careful in the directory link building world. It can


come from partnerships. It can come from suppliers. It can come from fans of the product. It can


come from reviews, all that kind of stuff. People who give you their testimonials, you


can potentially ask them for links, all that kind of stuff. Those links, if they are from


diverse sets of domains and they contain good anchor text, meaning the name of your actual


product and they are pointing specifically to this page, they will tremendously help


you rank above your competition. Last one is freshness. In some industries and in some


cases when you know that there is a lot of demand for the latest and greatest, you should


be updating this page as frequently as you can with the new information that is most


pertinent and relevant to your audience. You do these things and you do these things and


you will have the best damn e-commerce page on the web. All right, everyone. Thanks for


#WhiteboardFriday: Core Web Vitals: The Next Official Google Ranking Factor

Howdy Moz fans!


Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


I'm Cyrus Shepard here at Moz.


Today we're talking about the next official Google ranking factor, Web Core Vitals.


Now what do I mean by official ranking factor?


Google makes hundreds of changes a year.


Every week they introduce new changes to their algorithm.


Occasionally they announce ranking factor changes.


They do this in particular when something is important or they want to encourage people,


webmasters to make changes to their site beforehand.


They do this for important things like HTTPS and other signals.


So this is one they actually announced.


It's confusing to a lot of people so I wanted to try to demystify what this ranking signal


means, what we can do to diagnose and prepare for it and basically get in a place where


we're ready for things to happen.


So what is it?


Big first question.


What are Web Core Vitals?


So these are real world experience metrics that Google's looking at that answer things


like how fast does the page load, how fast is it interactive, how fast is it stable.


So basically when visitors are using your web page on a mobile or desktop device, what's


that experience like in terms of speed, how fast can they interact with it, things like


that.


Now it's joining a group of metrics that Google calls page experience signals.


It's not really a standalone.


It's grouped in with these page experience metrics that are separate from the text on


the page.


So these are signals like mobile friendliness, HTTPS, intrusive interstitials which are those


pop-ups that come on and appear.


So it's not so much about the text of the page which are traditional ranking signals


but more about the user experience and what it's like, how pleasant it is to use the page,


how useful it is.


These are especially important on mobile when sometimes the speed isn't as high.


And so that's what Google is measuring here.


So that's what it is.


Where is this going to affect rankings?


Well, it's going to affect all regular search results, mobile and desktop, based on certain


criteria but also, and this is an important point, Web Core vitals are going to become


a criteria to appear in top stories, Google top stories.


These are the news results that usually appear at the top of search results.


Previously AMP was a requirement to appear in those top stories.


AMP is going away.


So you still have to meet the requirements for regular Google news inclusion but AMP


is not going to be a requirement anymore to appear in top stories but you are going to


have to meet a minimum threshold of Web Core vitals.


So that's an important point.


So this could potentially affect a lot of ranking results.


When is it going to happen?


Well, Google has told us that it's going to happen sometime in 2021 because of COVID-19.


They have pushed back the release of this within the algorithm and they want to give


webmasters extra time to prepare.


They have promised us at least six months notice to get ready.


As of this recording today, we have not received that six month notice.


When that updates, we will update this post to let you know when that's going to be.


So anytime Google announces a ranking factor change, the big question is how big of change


is this going to be?


How much do I have to worry about these metrics and how big of results are we going to see


shift in Google search?


Well it's important to keep in mind that Google has hundreds of ranking signals and so the


impact of any one signal is usually not that great.


That said, if your site is particularly poor at some of these metrics, it could make a


difference and if you're in a highly competitive environment competing against people for highly


competitive terms, these can make a difference.


So it probably is not going to be huge based on past experience with other ranking signals


but it is still something that we might want to address especially if you're doing pretty


poorly.


The other thing to consider, some Google signals have outsized impact beyond their actual ranking


factors, things like page speed.


It's probably a pretty small signal but as users experience it, it can have outsized


influence.


Google's own studies show that pages that meet these thresholds of Web Core Vitals,


visitors are 24% less likely to abandon the site.


So even without Web Core Vitals being an official Google ranking factor, it can still be important


because it provides a better user experience.


24% is like gaining 24% more traffic without doing anything simply by making your site


a little more usable.


So even without that, it's probably still something we want to consider.


So I want to jump briefly into the specifics of Web Core Vitals, what they're measuring.


I think people get a little hung up on these because they're very technical, their eyes


kind of glaze over when you talk about them.


So my advice would be let's not get hung up on the actual specifics but I think it is


important to understand in layman's terms exactly what's being measured.


More importantly, we want to talk about how to measure, identify problems and fix these


things if they happen to be wrong.


So very briefly, there are three signals that go into Web Core Vitals.


The first being Largest Contentful Paint, LCP.


This basically asks, in layman's terms, how fast does the page load?


Very easy concept.


So this is hugely influenced by the render time of the largest image, video, text in


the viewport.


That's what Google is looking at.


The largest thing in the viewport, whether it be a desktop page or a mobile page, the


largest piece of content, whether it be an image, video or text, how fast does that take


to load?


Very simple and that can be influenced by your server time, your CSS, JavaScript, client-side


rendering, all these can play a part.


So how fast does it load?


Second thing, Cumulative Shift Layout, CSL.


This is asking, Google is asking with this question, how fast is the page stable?


Now I'm sure we've all had an experience where we've loaded a page on our mobile phone, we


go to click a button and at the last second it shifts and we hit something else or something


in the page layout has an unexpected layout shift.


That's poor user experience and so that's what Google is measuring with Cumulative Shift


Layout.


How fast is everything stable?


And the number one reason that things aren't stable is that image sizes often aren't defined.


So if you have an image and it's 400 pixels wide and tall, those need to be defined in


the HTML.


There are other reasons as well such as animations and things like that but that's what they're


measuring, Cumulative Shift Layout.


Third thing within these WebCore vitals metrics are first input delay, FID, FID.


So this question is basically asking, how fast is the page interactive?


To put it another way, when a user clicks on something, a button or a JavaScript event,


how fast can the browser start to process that and produce a result?


So it's not a good experience when you click on something and nothing happens or it's very


slow so that's what that's measuring.


And that can depend on your JavaScript or party code and there are different ways to


dig in and fix those.


So these three altogether are WebCore vitals and play into the real, the page experience


signals.


So like I said, let's not get hung up on these.


Let's focus on what's really important.


If you have a problem, how do you measure how you're doing with WebCore vitals and how


do you fix those issues?


And Google has made it very, very simple to discover.


The first thing you want to do is look in Search Console.


They have a new report there, Core Web Vitals.


They look at all your, they will tell you all your URLs that they have in their index,


whether they're poor, needs improvement or good.


If you have URLs that are poor or needs improvement, that's when you want to investigate and find


out what's wrong and how you can improve those pages.


Every report in Search Console links to a report in Page Speed Insights.


This is probably the number one tool you want to use to diagnose your problems with WebCore


vitals.


It's a high house, a suite of performance metric tools.


And you want to focus on the opportunities and diagnostics.


Now I'm going to be honest with you.


Some of these can get pretty technical.


You may need a web developer who is an expert in Page Speed or someone else who can comfortably


address these problems if you're not very technical.


We have a number of resources here on the Moz blog dealing with Page Speed.


We'll link to those in the comments below.


But generally you want to go through and you want to address each of these opportunities


and diagnostics to improve your WebCore vital score and get these out of poor and needs


improvement into good.


Now if you don't have access to Search Console, Google has made, put these reports in many,


many tools across the web.


Lighthouse of course you can run for any page.


Chrome DevTools, the Crux API.


All of these are available and resources for you to find out exactly how your site is performing


with WebCore vitals and go in and we have some time until 2021 to address these things.


All right.


That's it.


That's WebCore vitals in a nutshell.


We've got more than six months to go.


Get ready at least at a very minimum.


Dive in and see how your site is performing and see if we can find some easy wins to get


our sites up to speed.


Keyword Research Certification

Hi everyone, the Moz Academy team are thrilled to hear that you're interested


Keyword Research Certification

in learning more about the Keyword Research Certification. My name is Emily


Keyword Research Certification

and I'll be your instructor for the Keyword Research Certification. I'm a


Keyword Research Certification

learning and development specialist at Moz. Prior to this I was an onboarding


Keyword Research Certification

specialist at Moz. The Keyword Research Certification consists of four courses


Keyword Research Certification

with a final exam to test what you've learned. Each course is roughly an hour


Keyword Research Certification

long, give or take a few minutes. There will be tasks and quizzes along the way


Keyword Research Certification

to keep you on track so you can test what you've learned and prepare for the


Keyword Research Certification

final exam. By the end of this certification you'll be able to define


Keyword Research Certification

keyword research, dispel SEO myths and anticipate future trends, listen to your


Keyword Research Certification

audience, create a keyword model based on the sales funnel and semantic search,


Keyword Research Certification

create an SEO tracking system and assess a brand's visibility across keyword


Keyword Research Certification

clusters and customize your keyword strategy to suit your own business's


Keyword Research Certification

needs, among much more. Upon completion of this certification you'll receive an


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official certificate from Moz and you'll be able to add it directly to your


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LinkedIn profile. So are you ready to check out the certification? If so click


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Keyword Research Certification


What are the Makings of a High Quality Link? — Whiteboard Friday

Hi my friends, welcome to an edition of What Would Friday. I'm Paddy Moogan, I'm the co-founder


of Aeron, a UK based digital agency. Today we'll talk about link building, in particular


what are the makings of a high quality link. So we're going to talk about link relevancy,


link diversity and link authority and then also talk a little bit about the long term


of link building. How you can think about making it sustainable and how to make sure


that what you're doing now is going to work in the future. How to approach doing that


as well. Firstly let's talk about relevance. We're going to start with page relevance.


The key thing to keep in mind here is thinking about your target audience for your product


or your service. Think about what kinds of pages would be relevant to them, what kind


of content would they read, what kind of articles would they save online and go off and try


and search for. Because once you've done that you've got the kind of relevance that's really


really important here. So for example if you sell coffee beans online through an online


store and you get a link from a page that's about how to brew iced coffee, that's exactly


the kind of page that your target audience for selling coffee beans to would probably


read and enjoy and seeing your link there gives them a chance to see your brand and


possibly click through to your website as well. So really think about your target audience


for your product or your service and think about what kind of content they would be reading


and what they would enjoy online. Those are exactly the kind of pages you should be trying


to get links from and that's the key to relevance here. The next key to relevance is about what's


happened on your website, so what kind of content you publish and produce that then


goes and gets links. So for example if your coffee beans in selling coffee beans online


and you produce a piece of content that's the most searched for car brands by state,


it could be a great piece of content, could be visual, could be interactive, could be


really interesting and then you get lots of links to it from lots of different car sites.


Okay if those car sites aren't relevant, which they aren't to coffee beans incorporated,


these links may not mean as much as they could do otherwise. So that's what's really important


to remember when publishing content on your website that then goes and gets links. Now


this kind of thing isn't a problem if you do it occasionally or you do random idea,


have a bit of fun, do something that's a bit different, a bit quirky, there's nothing wrong


with doing that but don't do it over and over and over again. The majority of the content


on your website and the majority that you then go and build links to should be as close


as possible to what you do as a product or as a service and therefore relevant to your


target audience because when you do that you're getting more than just links, you're getting


your brand different and the right kinds of people that could then become customers in


the future as well. Now next up, diversity. So what we're talking about here is a few


different ways to think about diversity of your link profile, how to make sure that profile


is as natural as possible and to make sure it's as high quality as possible. So firstly


if you've got a site here that gets lots of links from different domains, that's great.


Now if you get a link from the same domain again and then the same domain again over


here so you've now got two links from the same domains twice, that's not really a problem,


that's something that's actually a good thing to have especially if that domain is high


quality. However at the same time you do need to be thinking about getting links from lots


of different domains. So these ones are all great, all high quality but also think about


how to get links from others as well because ultimately links from new domains show Google


that you truly are a high quality website, you truly are a site worth linking to because


if you're getting links from the same sites over and over again, whilst it may not be


a problem, it's not as high quality as getting links from lots of new domains as well. So


try and keep that in mind so when you're targeting new links make sure you're going after ones


that you haven't already got as well and importantly the ones that your competitors don't have,


that's really really important as well. Secondly when it comes to diversity, we want diversity


in the type of page that links to us. So for example is a blog linking to you, is it a


news website, is it a forum, is it a chat site, whatever it is, you want lots of diversity


in there as well. You don't want to be getting links from the same kinds of sites over and


over and over again, you want plenty of diversity in there to show Google that you are actually


a high quality website as well. So when you're thinking about how to build links, try not


to limit yourself to just one type of website, of course nothing wrong with getting links


from the same ones over and over again but make sure you're expanding your reach as much


as possible and getting links from lots of different types of sites as well with your


content. Thirdly the position of the link on a page as well, this is something which


is probably something just to keep in mind rather than worrying about too much but what


Google can do is look at the position of a link on a page, it could be in the sidebar,


it could be in the footer, it could be in the body and they would look at that and that


may affect how much equity they pass across that link as well to you. So for example if


you're getting lots and lots of links from website footers that's not exactly a prime


location for someone to actually click on and come through to your website to. So lots


and lots of those may not mean quite as much as links from the main body of a website where


people can see front and centre. So again not something to worry about too much but


something just to keep in mind when looking at your link profile. If you've got too much


of one of these then that may not be a great sign to Google and you may want to take a


close look at what's going on there and the reasons why. And finally authority, so what


we're talking about here is how much strength, authority, link equity a domain can pass to


you from their own. So rather than just saying that your site's in the middle here and you've


got links from these sites, we're saying well who links to them? How many great links have


they got and therefore how much strength have they got to pass along to you as well? Because


that's ultimately how you can influence your rankings and influence your organic search


by getting links from sites that have authority themselves. It's a combination of relevancy,


diversity or authority that can make up a quality link. Now of course there's lots and


lots of signals Google can use here, there's hundreds possibly thousands of variations


of those signals but it's a combination of these that are likely to mean the most to


you as a link builder. Finally just talk a little bit about the long term here. Now a


few principles to keep in mind because these kinds of things are the kind of thing to think


about and to keep in mind but ultimately you want to think a bit bigger than that. So for


example quality over quantity, ultimately you want to be getting links that are as high


quality as possible, the ticker's name these boxes as possible rather than just getting


as many links as you possibly can, it's always about the quality. And also links mean different


things to different sites so for example one link to one brand that's only to a different


brand could have very different effects on their organic search and organic rankings.


So remember that everyone's different here there's not a fixed rule for any of this,


every link profile, every domain, every website is different. So links that you get for one


site may be very different to another as well. This is really important, focus on making


your website link worthy. What I mean by that is making sure that you're not just going


and asking for links and getting every single link possible but people are naturally linking


to your website as well. What will make people link without even thinking about it? The best


links you can get and the most high quality links you can get are the ones that you didn't


even ask for, the ones that someone has linked you with because you're a good site, you're


a good product, you're a good service, you've got a great piece of content. Those are ultimately


the high quality links you want to pursue and go after. And Google uses lots of signals.


There's been talks about a couple of them here that they may use but they use many outside


of link building as well. They can use user signals, they can of course use technical


on page signals, all sorts of things going on there. So don't focus too much on links


alone, think about the other side of this as well. If you're building lots of links


to sites that are fundamentally broken, they're slower, they're not responsive, no amount


of links will fix those issues. So remember that there's a lot more going on here than


just links. And finally, does the link make sense? That's one of the ultimate sense checks


to see if a link is high quality or not. If it looks like it makes sense to you and says


okay, well actually my coffee bean company is getting links from a White's Coffee article,


that makes sense. This one, not so much. So ultimately, don't be afraid of getting outside


of the tools, getting outside of the metrics, just using your own instinct, using your own


experience to figure out does this link make sense for my site or my clients or my business.


If it does, then ultimately it's probably going to be a good quality link. If you're


looking at it and thinking, I'm not really sure why we've got that kind of link, then


you may want to actually think about it and you actually want more of those kind of links


in the future. So that's it for this week's What Was Friday. I'm Paddy Moogan. If you


want to drop me a message, I'm at Paddy Moogan on Twitter. You can also go to aero.net and


drop me an email as well. Also drop some comments below and I can get back to you if you've


SEO and Accessibility: Content [Series Part 3] — Whiteboard Friday

Hey Moz fans, welcome to the latest edition of Whiteboard Friday.


I'm Cooper Holmayer.


I've been doing SEO since 2016 and today I work for a large outdoor retailer helping


our technical SEO strategy come to life.


Thank you so much for attending this series on SEO and accessibility.


I hope that you gained a broad perspective and new tips and tricks for creating content


that not only is resonating with your audience, performs well in search, but is also accessible


to more people.


Today we're going to talk about technical SEO and accessibility.


Let's dive in.


Last time we talked about web content accessibility guidelines and you might remember that the


four principles of WCAG are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.


As a technical SEO, you're probably most concerned with perceivable because your day-to-day operations,


your day-to-day workstream involves making sure that the pages, the content, the experiences


you're creating are accessible to search engines and perceivable search engines.


A lot of times when we go through SEO recommendations or SEO audits, I hear a lot of common themes


like the header tag is baked into the image so a search engine can't see it or the content


I'm producing is visible to bots but it's not visible to people.


These are issues with base level perception.


I want you to take that mindset and consider if you apply that to your whole audience as


well.


Can all of your people that are hoping to engage with your service or product or experience,


are they able to perceive all the things you have to offer at a base level?


Some things you might be thinking would be similar to what you'd be seeing in this audit


like is all of my text on the page visible?


Is it active text?


Is it native to the page so can I select it and copy and paste it or is it baked into


the image and unreachable by assistive technology or browsers or what have you?


You might also be thinking is the color contrast the right for between my background and my


text?


Is it the right contrast?


Is there enough clarity and crispness between my layout elements?


If things seem a little bit fuzzy or it's not quite clear that something is accessible


to a search engine and a user, go back to the drawing board and figure out how to make


both of those things work out well.


We also like to add images, text, video and audio to the pages that we're building for


our customers.


It's important that these rich elements, now we're kind of past the basic text and the


styling elements, but the rich elements we're putting on the page are perceivable by all


of your users as well.


There's a couple of things we can do to make that happen.


For images, giving them a text alternative and providing something that is in addition


to that imagery will help it be seen by a screen reader and understood by someone who


has a visual disability.


Also naming things with human friendly names versus DSC1352.JPEG is going to help search


engines as well as assistive technology see that image and understand what it is.


On page context.


It's also important that you put images on pages that add value.


You want to enlighten a user with some additional content to give them a little bit more of


a feeling or give them some more context in what you're talking about.


Add images for value, not just to show up in Google image search.


What about video?


Video is a little bit different.


Video has a series of moving images.


Every time I think about movement, I think to myself, how can I make sure that if a user


wants to stop this movement, they can?


Having clear playback controls is crucial when we're talking about accessibility as


well as having a great video player experience for any user.


In addition, synchronous equivalence for those text alternatives.


We talked about images having text alternatives.


Videos need to have text alternatives as well, but they need to be synchronized to time with


that video.


Otherwise, they won't make sense in context.


Making sure that they're distinguishable.


This is the same between video and audio.


We want to make sure that the foreground and the background are easily distinguishable


from another.


If your video feels muddy, if your audio feels muddy and it takes me straining my ear or


straining my eyes to be able to see that content and understand what's happening, you need


to be a little bit more crisp, a little bit more clear on those two distinctions.


Text transcripts.


Just like when you close captions for videos, for audio, you want to have a text transcript.


If I'm maybe in a loud place and I can't hear the audio or I don't have my headphones plugged


in or I need it to use assistive technology, I'm able to access that audio.


These are all things that you'll be seeing as you're reviewing code as a technical SEO


and you should be aware of.


If you don't have these things going on on your website, I would empower you to ask those


questions.


The hard question is like, hey, is there a text alternative for this image?


How will a person with a visual disability, how will a person with an auditory disability


access these things?


Three and four are about page structure and semantic HTML.


This is a little bit less about is this perceivable and is it understandable.


It's grazing the understandable but it should be a little bit about perception too.


Having a bunch of H1s on a page, as you can imagine, a search engine might perceive as


very confused.


They'd be like, okay, there's a bunch of H1s on this page.


I'm not really sure what this page is about.


Adding structure and cascading headings to signify parent-child relationships is going


to help your content be a little bit more perceivable.


It's going to be easier to understand what's happening.


Same thing with semantic HTML.


We tend to put lots of divs and spans and unidentifiable elements in our HTML but by


marking them up in more appropriate ways so that we understand what their meaning is,


understand what those tags contain, whether it's navigation or forms or tables, providing


that extra layer of information and understandability is going to allow search engines and assistive


technology to be able to parse through those things.


It's going to be allowing them to perceive the things you're putting on your page that


are different from one another and provide a richer experience.


Okay, so we're able to perceive the content but how do we make sure that it's operable?


A couple SEO recommendations that I often see people making are build an HTML sitemap


and put breadcrumbs on your page.


A lot of times you might get some pushback from that.


The HTML sitemap is super important, we know, for SEO for discoverability of those pages


deep in our website's hierarchy.


We know that breadcrumbs are also pretty equally important for discoverability.


Both of these elements help users with assistive technology better navigate the website.


The HTML sitemaps allow for if your menu doesn't include all the pages on your website or if


it's confusing or using JavaScript or some other technology that's not accessible to


my tech stack.


And then breadcrumbs allow me to parse up and down the particular, let's say it's a


product search page on an e-commerce website without having to go back to the menu and


then parse through every single menu item again.


So these two are super important for navigation but also especially for people who are navigating


with keyboard and using assistive technology.


And then a non-SEO thing but important nonetheless and relatable, develop your website and your


experience keyboard first.


Not everyone has a mouse or the ability to use a mouse because of a movement disability


or because of an impairment or because of a lack of technology or hardware.


So make sure you develop keyboard first and you're going to encapsulate more of those


people that you're looking to encapsulate with your audience.


Understandable.


So we talk about an international SEO and when we're dealing with different countries


and different languages, how important it is to use the HTML on our page to signify


what the language of the page is.


It helps search engines provide the right results in the right, you know, maybe national


or international contexts.


It also helps screen readers read your content aloud in the right language.


And the navigation and layout and interstitials I think are pretty common but nobody likes


a navigation or a layout of a website that's confusing.


The easier you make it, the easier it is for people to convert or do what you're looking


for them to do with this website, whether it's learn, whether it's buy, whether it's


engage in a service.


That's easier when the navigation and layout is streamlined and we're not using different


words in different places to mean the same thing.


It's even more important for people with assistive technology.


Interstitials, nobody likes those popups in our face that don't allow us to browse the


rest of the website.


Google doesn't love them either but especially people with assistive technologies, if we're


not treating those popups in the right way, we're going to end up in a scenario where


a user is maybe in a keyboard trap and they can't get out of this interstitial or they


don't understand that an interstitial is even put up on the page.


So it's important to be very mindful when using interstitials.


Last but not least is robust.


How do we make sure that the content we're putting on the page is compatible for a large


variety of devices and scenarios?


Just using proper HTML is a big way to do this.


You can use a validator and you can look at your HTML, your CSS, your JSON-LD and creating


the right code and especially when you're using semantic HTML as well, providing meaning


to that code, you're going to have a lot better experience and everything you're building


is more digestible.


Is your website responsive?


You should be doing this already but if you're not, make sure it's operating on a mobile


and a desktop and a tablet device and the layout stays the same, it's just maybe resized


or re-imagined in a different way and make sure it's interactable.


If a user wants to be able to zoom in because they have a visual disability or they want


to be able to change the colors, does your technology and your website allow them to


do that?


It should.


If you do these three things on the bottom, I think it's going to do a lot of heavy lifting


and you're going to have to do a lot less work because you've kind of built in the framework,


the foundation, to be accessible.


That's technical SEO and accessibility.


If you have more questions or want some validation tools, there's some on the right hand side


here or you can hit me up on Twitter, at Cooper Holmayer, for some more advice.


Thank you so much for listening to Whiteboard Friday and accessibility along with SEO.


I hope that you take this and you become more and more inclusive in the way that you're


MozCon 2014 - 18 - Justin Cutroni - Supercharging Your Digital Analytics!

Well, good afternoon.


Try that again.


Good afternoon.


Thank you.


You have to help me a little bit.


I'm speaking after Marshall, right, who just did a fantastic job, talked a lot about data,


which really gets me excited.


And then I'm talking after an ex-NFL Olympic skier, okay?


So you have to kind of understand where my ego is a little bit.


Better late than never.


Okay.


So thank you so much for that wonderful introduction, Cyrus.


So I'm Justin, I'm the analytics evangelist at Google.


And probably what you're thinking is something along these lines, like, really, analytics


evangelist, this guy?


I work in digital marketing.


I'm on the Internet, right?


This is an analytics evangelist, right?


That's the analytics evangelist.


Who's this other guy?


He's kind of short and kind of mopey looking.


Obviously, Avinash has been a tremendous influence on most of the people in this room, certainly


on myself and my career.


I met him ten years ago.


And one of the hardest things is to actually have his former title.


But Avinash is actually our digital marketing evangelist at Google.


And I'm the analytics guy.


And what I do is I actually sit with the analytics team.


And I have a whole team.


And our team is specifically dedicated to teaching analytics.


The mission that my team has is literally teach everyone analytics.


That's our sole charge.


And so we do a lot of stuff from writing documentation for analytics and tag management to speaking


at events.


We manage all the social channels.


And one of my favorite things is we get to come out and speak at events.


This is probably the favorite part of my job because I get to hear about how people use


data and what they love about analytics and what they hate about analytics.


And I get to take that information back and actually change what we do and what we build.


And so today I'm excited to kind of take a step back and just talk a little bit about


how to rethink analytics, right?


And how to think about what we're doing now and maybe how to change that to really take


it to the next level.


And one of the things that's been really exciting about all of the presentations I've seen is


like everyone's talking about data.


And I think that's fabulous, right?


It's just one of the things about digital marketing that's so exciting is the fact that


what we do, no matter what we do, we have almost instantaneous feedback to understand


the results and for us to change and move forward.


And I think that's just such a great thing.


And it's really exciting to kind of work on a product that does that.


So let's start with maybe something simple, right?


Measuring what matters.


And I think for a long time, way back in the old days, like 2007, 2008, we tried to get


people to measure things like conversions and revenue.


And we did a really good job at that.


And we've kind of gotten to this point where we measure those things, right?


The bottom of the funnel things that are really important.


But sometimes we just take for granted the data that's in the tool.


And we measure based on the data that the tool gives us.


And I think we can do a lot better than that, right?