So this is kind of the classic thing where I think a lot of early SEOs get lost, and


How Much Keyword Repetition is Optimal? - Whiteboard Friday

maybe even some folks who've been around for a long time remember back in the day when


Google and Yahoo and, well, old MSN search before Bing, right, would actually look at


the count and the repetition numbers, probably never actually used density, but they probably


did use simplistic algorithms like TFIDF, right, term frequency times inverse document


frequency, looking for those less frequently used terms across the web and seeing if you


have a higher concentration of those in your document than other people do.


Well, now there's probably still some elements of keyword matching, right?


Google's likely to give you a little bit of a boost if you say, are skeleton keys real,


and everybody else says real vintage antique skeleton keys or something like that.


So I'm not suggesting against using this actual keyword phrase precisely.


If you know that that is what your document, that's what your article is about, that's


the piece of content that you have and those are the searchers you want to target, yeah,


go ahead, make the title of the piece, are skeleton keys real, you know, we dig into


history to find out.


That's a compelling title.


I would click on that if that were my search query.


So there are some keyword matching elements.


There's probably also some topic modeling, well, almost certainly some topic modeling


stuff where they're looking at what are other terms and phrases that are frequently used


when we see skeleton keys used.


And if we don't see, well, if we do see those terms and phrases on other people's pages


but we don't see them on yours, we might not consider your document to be relevant to the


keyword.


Maybe you're talking about skeleton keys, you know, as a new programming language.


Maybe you're talking about the skeleton key mobile app, I don't know if that's a real


thing, but it could be.


Maybe skeleton keys is the name of your dog, right?


They don't know and so they look at these topic modeling sorts of algorithms to try


and figure out like, oh, okay, look, they're talking about locks, they're talking about


antiques, they're talking about history, I think we can be relatively assured that yes,


this document is on the topic of skeleton keys.


If you don't use those words and phrases, the topic modeling algorithm is going to miss


you.


Intent analysis, so Google is looking very hard for user intent.


What do people want from this query?


And they have a huge store of knowledge around past queries that people have performed, right?


Hundreds of billions, well, trillions and trillions of queries over the decade and a


half that Google has been around that they can look at and say, aha, when was the intent


of a keyword informational, transactional, navigational, and can we try and figure out


what the intent of this particular keyword search is and then serve up results that hit


that intent right on the nose.


And look, sometimes when you get analyzed for this, if you are not serving the same


intent, right, so if you are selling skeleton keys, it could be that you actually won't


rank as well for our skeleton keys real as someone who's providing purely an informational


document.


And if someone searches for antique skeleton keys, your document about our antique skeleton


keys real might not rank as well as someone who actually sells them, right, because Google


is trying to serve that intent and they do a pretty good job with that.


And then there might be some other algorithm elements in there like QDD, right, query deserves


diversity, so maybe Google sees different intents for a search and so they try and provide


different results and you might rank because of that or you might not rank because of that.


Or things like QDF where they say, we need a fresh result here, right?


People are looking for recent documents around skeleton keys because there was a big idea


in the news about a break-in using skeleton keys or something, right?


And so we know that we should put the news box in there and maybe we should have a document


that's much fresher, those kinds of things.


Last one, last big consideration set here is searcher's opinions and engagement.


This matters a ton because if searchers don't engage with your piece, right, if they stand


around and they go, huh, I don't think I should click on that.


It doesn't even take as long as I just took to say those words, right?


You just make that split second judgment as you're scanning down a page of search results


about whether something is relevant to your needs or not.


And so searchers are constantly asking themselves when they look at a set of results, should


I click back, should I read and engage, should I share and amplify the content once I reach


it, should I remember this brand or this page or bookmark it, right?


All of those kinds of things go into the search engine's consideration set as well and they


make their way in there through user and usage data, right?


We know that Google can monitor and measure, certainly when you click back to the search


results.


We know that through Chrome and through Android and all these other things, right, toolbar,


right, that they can look at activity that's happening on a website or through a search


journey.


We know they can see sharing and amplification data, absolutely.


If it's links, they can probably look at other kinds of amplification too.


They definitely can look at people who remember a brand and search for a brand, right?


So if someone searches for Etsy skeleton keys, that might be a strong signal to Google that


they should rank Etsy's page when people search for just skeleton keys.


All of those kinds of things are making it in here and so we have to ask ourselves, does


this match the need that I have, right?


Are we creating pages that searchers feel matches their need?


And then they're asking, do I recognize or trust this brand?


Or at least, if I don't know this brand at all, when I look at the URL and the domain


name, Bing did a big study on this a couple of years ago, right, they asked themselves


like, does that sound like a sketchy domain name?


For example, I did see, I think it was antique-skeleton-keys.com ranking for this query.


They're still on page one.


It's not actually that terrible a page, although it has some kind of spammy AdSense all mixed


in there, but you know, has some information.


That kind of stuff, when searchers see that, they are less likely to click it because they've


had bad experiences with like multiple hyphenated keyword matchy domains, antique-skeleton-keys.com,


no offense, but you all aren't doing that world an entirely big favor right now.


And then they're going to ask, does this snippet stand out and grab my attention?


If it does, more likely to get a higher click-through rate, more likely to get that engagement.


So these three big considerations lead us to some quick rules of thumb.


I'm going to say that for 95% of pages out there, not every single one, there's always


going to be a few exceptions, but for 95% of pages out there, you should do at least


these things, right?


I'll put a little, put nice little boxes here to help out.


So yes, I should have my keyword that I'm targeting, if I know that I'm going after


this keyword, this search intent, that's what the page is about, that's the primary keyword


target, I should target it at least once in the title element of the page.


Likewise, you should do the same thing in the headline.


This is not because the H1 tag is all that important.


It doesn't even matter all that much whether it's H1 or H2 or H3, if your CSS is a little


messy, that's okay.


As long as the big letters at the top of the page that make up the headline so that when


a searcher lands after clicking R skeleton keys real and seeing your R skeleton keys


real article, they again see right at the top of the page R skeleton keys real.


So they know they clicked on the right result and they have that consistency.


People really like that.


That's very important from a psychological perspective and you need that so that people


don't click back and choose a different result because they're like, wait a minute, this


article is not the one that I thought I clicked on, this is something else.


I'm going to say two to three times in content, that is a very rough rule.


Generally speaking, if you don't have the keyword at least a couple of times in the


content of the page, unless you have an extremely visual page or interactive page with almost


no content, which maybe that would fall in the 5%, you should definitely be hitting that.


And then one time in the meta description.


Meta description, important because of the snippet aspect of it.


Not that critical from a like, oh, well, that'll boost my ranking.


No, but it might boost your click-through rate.


It might make you appear more relevant to the searcher as they're searching through


and it'll help target that.


Sometimes, again, sometimes in that 5% there, there might be times when, you know what,


a snippet is actually better without the keyword, again, especially if it's a long keyword phrase


and you only have a little bit of room to explain things.


Okay.


So 95% of pages should do at least this and then many pages should also consider doing


a little bit of image optimization with things like a keyword in the image alt attribute.


If you, assuming you have an image on the page for a keyword like this, you would definitely


want to have some pictures of what skeleton keys have looked like, do look like today,


that kind of thing.


And the image file name itself too, which is important for image SEO.


Images still get a good amount of search traffic.


Even if you don't get a ton of click-through rate, you might get people using your image


and then citing it and that could lead to link behavior.


So we're talking about a long tail here, but a valuable long tail.


Once in the URL, generally this is important, but not critical, certainly not critical.


There could be plenty of reasons why you have a perfectly reasonable URL that does not include


the keywords many, many times.


A homepage is a great example.


You don't need to change your default homepage to include your keyword string so that when


you request whatever etsy.com, it redirects to vintage antique skeleton keys.


No, don't do that.


And one or more times in the sub-headers of the page.


If you have multiple blocks of sub-headers that are describing different attributes of


a particular piece of content, well, yeah, go ahead.


Use your keywords in there as they might apply.


Don't go overboard.


Another big rule of thumb, you can see my friend here, he's being weighed down by his


keywords, his ship is almost turned over.


Search engines are going to use stemming.


So stemming is basically saying, I'm going to look at skeleton and I'm going to cut that


down to skeleton so that if the word skeletal or the word skeletons or skeletons or skeletal,


well, maybe skeletal means a little something different.


You guys remember He-Man, right?


Oh, yeah, I know some of my viewers do.


But that stemming is going to mean that lots and lots of repetitions of minor variants


of a keyword are totally unnecessary.


And in fact, they can annoy searchers and people are consuming that content and they


might even trigger the engine's systems that say, this is keyword stuffing, this is bad,


don't do it.


Keyword stuffing, by the way, super easy to pattern match for engines and it's going to


make searchers click the back button.


So use a lot of caution if you're thinking about that.


And then on-page keyword use, remember that on-page keyword use is only a small piece


of the algorithm.


Right?


We're talking about a relatively small piece.


You could get all of this absolutely perfect or you could get only, say, 80 percent just


this stuff right.


And the difference is pretty minute in terms of your ranking ability.


So I would urge you not to spend too much time trying to go from, well, I hit these


things, these basic things that Ran talked about, but now I'm going to try and take my


keyword targeting and on-page optimization to the absolute max.


You can get a very, very tiny extra amount of value.


Do consider searchers intent and target topics and questions that they have.


If you can do this, engines are smart about this too.


So engines have these topic analysis and intent analysis models.


So a page that talks about skeleton keys, that fails to mention words like locks or


wards, or master keys, the engines might go, that doesn't seem particularly relevant or


not as relevant as the pages that do.


And so even though it has more links pointing at it, we're going to rank it lower.


And likewise, plenty of searchers are searching for those topics as well.


And so if you don't answer those queries and someone else does, well, they might click


on you, but then they'll click back.


Or they might click on you, but they won't share you or amplify you or link to you or


bookmark you or remember your brand.


You need all those signals in the modern on-page world.


All right, everyone, look forward to some great keyword targeting, some good questions


in the Q&A in the comments below.


And I'll see you next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Daily SEO Fix - Compare Rankings with Competitors

Hi, I'm Jo from the Moz Learning team and I'm going to show you a quick daily fix for


checking your rankings over time and also seeing any other URLs on your site that might


be ranking for your target keywords.


Let's hop in.


First of all, head to the rankings tab and scroll down to the tracked keywords overview.


From here, you can click on any of the keywords that you're tracking to analyse that keyword.


Underneath your performance, you'll see your rankings over time versus your competitors.


Now instead of looking at the highest ranking position, let's select keyword performance


from the dropdown.


Now we can see other URLs on our website that are also ranking in the top 50 positions of


this keyword.


This might be a flag for keyword cannibalisation on your site.


Daily SEO Fix Video #5: Discovered & Lost Backlinks

Hi there, welcome to the last video of this daily SEO fix edition.


My name is Owen and I'm on the onboarding team here at Moz.


I'll be showing you how to find your competitors to discover and loss the links within Moz


Pro.


So let's jump in.


So here you can enter your competitors website and select either root domain, subdomain or


an exact page of that site.


When I click analyze, I'm brought to this overview page.


But for now, I'm going to focus on the discover and loss section here on the left hand side.


You'll be able to see the total discovered links and total loss links at the very top,


looking back to the last 60 days.


Scroll down, you'll see a list of the links here and you can switch over to either discovered


or lost.


Discovered links are those links that the Moz index has found within the last 60 days.


They're potentially new backlinks that your competitors are receiving to their website.


So you can see the date that it was found, the domain authority score, spam score, as


well.


If you click on the right hand side here, you can see the exact backlink your competitors


site.


Your competitors recently discovered backlinks can be beneficial to know about when looking


to improve your own backlink profile.


These links could provide an opportunity for you to reach out to the linking website to


see if they're willing to link to you as well.


Lost links are those links that a website has essentially lost recently, meaning that


a website was once linking to your competitor, but no longer is.


Lost links aren't always lost for good.


Sometimes it could be a technical issue on a page that causes them to temporarily disappear.


You can see the date that these links were lost, the DA score and the spam score once


again.


If we drop down this menu once more, we can see the exact backlink.


This information can be vital when doing competitive link building.


You could attempt to reach out to these sites in the last section to see if there's an opportunity


for you to get that link to your own website instead.


Well, I hope this information was helpful.


Thank you so much for watching this additional daily SEO fix on the competitive link research.


MozCon 2015 - 12 - Become a Mobile SEO Superhero with Cindy Krum

Hi everybody. Thank you for the awesome introduction, Cyrus. I am super excited to be here today


talking to you about how to be a mobile SEO superhero in a post-April 21st world. Now,


Dr. Pete alluded to this already, but April 21st was the mobile-friendly algorithm change


and it was a big, big deal. It was the first time that Google had really communicated to


the SEO community the date and the specific requirements of an algorithm update, and this


was their attempt to get us all to comply with what they needed as part of this update.


So it was a big deal, but as SEOs, we don't always necessarily trust Google, and the fact


that they were being so transparent about this update kind of freaked people out. So


while Google called it the mobile-friendly update, SEOs, we can't resist a good headline,


so we renamed it Mobile Get'n. And a lot of people were expecting the worst, something


maybe like that. And Google loved the press that this algorithm update was getting because


it meant more people were going to comply and become mobile-friendly by the deadline,


so that was great for them. So they started saying things like, hey, this algorithm update


is going to be bigger than Panda and Penguin updates combined. And so SEOs who weren't


previously paying attention all of a sudden started paying attention and things kind of


looked like that. Everyone was freaking out. Everyone was having their little special moment


meltdowns. And there was a lot of speculation about what was going to happen. And so we


really needed a superhero. And so my goal with today's presentation is to help you dissect


this algorithm update so that you understand what happened and what you need to plan for


in not only this update but future mobile-friendly updates, because I think we all know they're


going to happen. This isn't the last we're going to see of mobile.


So as a mobile SEO superhero, the first thing you need to understand is how do we evaluate


the situation? What can we find out when we survey the landscape? And so my recommendation


is that you think about these things from a Google business strategist perspective and


understand that the Google strategists know that mobile traffic is still growing. And


that's not only because people are accessing the web on their mobile devices more, but


they're accessing the web on more mobile devices. So it's growing at an increasing rate.


The other thing that the Google strategist knows is that users, what they care about


is getting the answer that they seek. They don't necessarily care about where the traffic


goes and if it goes to your website or not. So what Google has been doing is slowly de-emphasizing


web results. And that's particularly terrifying to us if we're SEOs or digital marketers,


because Google is in some ways preventing traffic from getting to our site or using


our own content to prevent traffic to get to our site. So that's a big threat.


When you think of it from Google's perspective, though, their job is to, they think, their


calling is to organize all the information so that it's easily accessible for users,


to organize the information of the earth. They think this is a higher calling and while


historically they've done that by giving us some kind of amalgamation of ten blue links,


that's not actually what they see their job as. So they're actually becoming this presentation


layer of the internet. They're getting between websites and users to make it a more user-friendly


experience across a broader number of mobile devices. And that's hard. It's particularly


hard because there are so many different mobile devices, but also so many different ways of


creating mobile websites. So let's talk about the different kinds of mobile websites that


are out there. First off, we have the old school m.mobile websites where you have mobile-specific


subdomain that has pages that hopefully match up with corresponding desktop pages and you


can use what's called bidirectional annotation to have those two versions of a page point


to each other so that Google knows to share the SEO value between those pages. So that's


the simplest. The next we have responsive design, which is Google's favorite, and that


uses one set of URLs with style sheets and media queries to help control how that content


renders on a lot of different devices. So that's Google's favorite. The next option


is what Google calls selective serving. And that is basically like kind of responsive


design that happens on the server. So responsive design is client-side, selective serving,


where the server recognizes the size of the device that you're on and sends the appropriate


content so it doesn't have to be processed client-side. The last one is pretty new, but


it's very trendy and it's very cool, and it's called single-page app architecture or single-page


web apps. And these use things like HTML5 and JavaScript to make an experience on the


web that looks a lot like a native app that you might download. So it's a much faster,


slicker experience, and it doesn't even necessarily need new URLs, new page loads. It feels much


more fluid. But that can create lots of problems for Google as a crawler since they understand


the world based on URLs. So there are all these things out there in the internet that


Google has to crawl and evaluate and rank order in some kind of meaningful way, but


they're all different ways of doing the code. So that's a really difficult task for them.


As a mobile SEO superhero, what you have to understand is that right now Google is considering


the desktop rendering of every site, the canonical version for evaluating the text and the keywords


in that page or for that page. So let's unpack this. On an m.site, if you have a mobile version


of a page and a desktop version of a page, as long as Google understands that those two


pages are related, they're looking at the text on the desktop version of the site because


they know on a mobile page you might cut out a little bit of text or you might paginate


it differently, but they know that you're going to put the most text on a desktop version.


So the desktop is canonical for the keywords. And that's also true on responsive design,


which with responsive design you only have one URL, one set of content, but you may have


something set up where the desktop rendering of the content gives you more text, but the


mobile rendering gives you a little bit less. And then also now Google has started indexing


deep screens within apps. So you can click on a link and get to open an app and get not


to the beginning of the app but somewhere deep in the app. And they've set up something


that's a lot like the bidirectional annotation that we use on m.sites. And here again, the


desktop version of the web page that the app screen is associated with is the canonical


version of that content. So in Mobile SEO for a long time what we've done is we've helped


companies reinforce the integrity of the canonical. With mobile content there's a lot more that


can go wrong so you have to be a lot more specific about what content you want in the


index and we try and make the crawler as efficient as possible because sometimes it's got more


to crawl. So when we honor the canonical what we're doing is making sure that there is one


URL and only one URL that renders for each piece of content on our site. And we're very


specific in this one URL. We're saying it has to be exactly, exactly the same. So if


the canonical version has a trailing slash then it always has a trailing slash. If it


has all lowercase letters in the URL then it always has lowercase letters. We don't


do things like have the homepage work at domain.com forward slash and also domain.com forward


slash default.php. That's two URLs that could render in your address bar but give you the


same content. So instead we would say the default.php needs a server rule that will redirect it to


the canonical version of that URL which is the forward slash. And so once we have those


server rules set up so that we only have one version of every URL that can render and everything


that's not that specific version redirects then we reinforce that canonical by using


it on the internal links, using it as a self-referencing canonical, using it correctly in the XML sitemaps,


using it in all the 301 redirects. And so that's how you honor the integrity of that


canonical and this is all desktop URLs frequently but what happens is that makes it possible


for your mobile content to rank. So if you're paying attention you're saying, hey wait a


minute Cindy, I just heard you talk a lot about the desktop and I thought this was a


mobile SEO session. I know but this is mobile SEO superhero training and you're going to


have to answer a lot of questions. Sometimes it's a lot of different questions but often


it's the same question over and over again and that question is how is mobile SEO different


from desktop SEO? You just finished talking a lot about the desktop and the answer is


mobile SEO is a lot more technical than desktop SEO. We're doing a lot more to prevent errors


and things like that but it's also a lot less about specific rankings and more about the


interaction of a user from the rankings to the website. The reason we focus less on the


rankings is because the rankings are so darn variable from situation to situation. So there


are a lot of different things that can change what rank order a website or different content


can be on a mobile search. First off we have are you logged in or not and often mobile


users do not know if they're logged in on their phone. You usually are. There's also


where did you start your search? Did you start your search in Chrome or did you start your


search in Google Now? If you're on an Android phone and you have the search bar on your


desktop on the phone, that's a Google Now search, not a Chrome search. You'll get different


results. Similarly, if you have location turned off or if you're by default browsing incognito,


again, those things will change not only the placement but the display of the results and


the ordering of the results. Now the last thing is operating system. You will get different


search results if you're on an Android phone versus an iPhone. They're not always wildly


different but often they are different enough. Also, Google has started this new thing that


they're doing that if you ride in a subway or live in a basement you might have seen


and that is the standard versus basic mobile search results and they've tried this before


but they're bringing it back and what it is is Google is trying to understand when you're


on a slow data connection and they're trying to provide a better search result for someone


on a slow data connection and that search result is different from someone on a fast


data connection. The differences are in the basic result they're not sending inline videos,


they're not sending lots of images, carousels, cards, they're not sending the rich lovely


results that we get when we're on a standard result. The impact is they're also not sending


things that are big like apps so the app packs that Dr. Pete talked about will not show in


a basic result so you know from what Dr. Pete said that that could change the rank order


of what's on a page by as many as six positions so over half of the positions can change from


basic to standard. Now the other thing that's important to understand about this situation


is it's new enough that most of the big box keyword reporting platforms like SearchMetrics


and BrightEdge and whoever else you want to throw into the mix, those platforms aren't


taking these differences into account and so when they're reporting on an average ranking


that average ranking can be pretty far off when you think it could go six up or six down.


They're just, it's hard to perceive and those tools are sometimes getting basic search results,


sometimes getting standard search results and it's not being broken out in your data


so that can make understanding rankings very confusing so we just understand in general


how are things ranking and go from there. So let's dig into what are the fundamental


changes that happened in Mobile Geddon, the mobile friendly update and this, if you remember


nothing else from my talk, you should be paying attention right now. The fundamental change


in the mobile friendly update was a division of labor between the desktop crawler and the


smartphone crawler. The desktop crawler is crawling and evaluating the text on the page


to understand semantically the relationship between the keywords on that page and other


keywords on the internet. The smartphone crawler is crawling to evaluate the user experience


and rendering of your site. That's it. So this is a portrait, this is how I like to


think of the smartphone crawler. Adorable. But let's think about what Google was telling


us about the mobile friendly update. The only thing that Google cared about in the mobile


friendly update was us making CSS and JavaScript crawlable. Now that actually has nothing to


do with mobile friendliness. You can have a horrible mobile user experience, have a horribly


unfriendly mobile site and still have CSS and JavaScript crawlable. But this was a binary


Google evaluation. Is it mobile friendly? Yes or no. And the only thing in that calculation


was is the appropriate CSS and JavaScript crawlable. So that's kind of weird until you


understand that it was just to make it mobile friendly for the smartphone bot so that they


could paint a picture or imagine what the rendering of your content looked like on a


variety of different devices. So the truth is the smartphone crawler doesn't really understand


more than just the rendering. And we've got this verified by Gary Iles at SMX advanced


when he said that if you take, for instance, a responsive design where we have text on


the desktop rendering but for whatever reason no text on the mobile rendering, Google could


still rank that mobile version of the page because it's using the desktop as the canonical


and it doesn't understand that that text isn't necessarily on the page. So as cute as the


smartphone crawler might be, it's illiterate. Now, that's not the end of the story. If you're


a black hat, don't get all worked up and decide to go and spam the smartphone bot. It's not


a good idea because Miley Oye from Google said that Google is trying to match content.


They're trying to prevent spam by evaluating how good a match the desktop to the mobile


content is. We don't know exactly how they're doing that, but we do think that the mobile


bot is learning to read or is reading on a very small level. So congratulations to the


smartphone bot. Yay. All right. Let's talk about mobile-friendly


tagging. So if you're deemed mobile-friendly, you get this mobile-friendly designation in


the search result. I'm going to show you some tools to figure out if you've got the mobile-friendly


tag. Now, the easiest one is not a tool. It's just going to Google on your phone and doing


a site colon query on your domain. This is the fastest way to get a site-wide or a big


evaluation of a lot of different templates on your site because you can just scroll through


and say, ah, all my major templates appear to be getting the mobile-friendly designation


in search results. That's awesome. If you find that a particular page or template is


not getting the mobile-friendly designation, then I recommend you switch to Google's mobile-friendly


test. And they launched this tool just to help SEOs with the mobile-friendly update.


This one goes one URL at a time, and it will tell you exactly what content is being blocked


that's preventing you from getting the mobile-friendly designation. So that's nice and useful. But


that was the only feedback it was giving. We've seen them testing this tool and adding


other stuff in that I'll talk about later. But right now, it was just binary about the


CSS and JavaScript. Was it crawlable? The other thing to note is if you have a little


bit of CSS and JavaScript that's not crawlable, sometimes Google's okay with that. They have


a list of white-listed domains, like ad services and stuff like that, that sometimes will block


CSS and JavaScript, and they know about those, so they're not dinging you for that necessarily.


They want you to make anything that you can control crawlable, and if you can't often,


they'll still give you the mobile-friendly tag. Other tools you can use are Webmaster


Console's Fetch and Render as Google. This came out before the mobile-friendly update,


even before the hubbub about it. The fetch part of the tool will go and get the requests,


so it'll know exactly what files are being requested and which ones of those are crawlable.


And the render will show you what Google paints, the picture that Googlebot for smartphones


paints when they see it. Now, realize that the two versions of the bot, smartphone bot


and desktop bot, they're doing different tasks, but they do work together, and Google has


made a big point of telling us that content that's not visible or text that's not visible


on the initial rendering of the page is being devalued. That's how we know they're working


together. They're taking the rendering and applying that and understanding where the


text fits into that rendering, and that's why they're focusing a lot on telling us right


now that hidden content is devalued, and especially interstitials that pop up and will block content,


those are devaluing the text behind them, because that's what they're trying to do,


understand the rendering with the smartphone bot. You can also get graphs like this. If


you have a large site, you can see in a big way how much blocked content you have. They're


also giving feedback like this on user experience cues that have historically been in Google


page speed tool, and those are things that actually do make a website mobile friendly.


If you get these right, then you probably are mobile friendly, but these actually aren't


in the mobile friendly evaluation yet. These are the ones we've seen being tested in the


mobile friendly tool results page, but they don't right now affect your ability to get


the tag. So these are things like viewport settings, which is a screen size setting,


font sizes, tap target sizes, mobile specific errors like having flash or having faulty


redirects. So those are things that are soon going to be in the mobile friendly evaluation.


They're not in there yet. They will be soon. The next thing that I think will happen after


we get those UX ranking signals in is image specific ranking signals, because images are


particularly hard in mobile and especially hard in responsive design, which is Google's


baby. Google loves responsive design. The reason is you can send a beautiful, gorgeous,


huge image to a desktop, but then you have to do something about how you send that massive


image to a phone and not make it a really slow experience, a really bad user experience.


So what you can do here is start building in sprites, which are collections of the small


icons on your site, and they come across in one image and then you use your style sheets


to place those on the page. What that does is that minimizes the round trip requests


to the server to get the sprites or sorry, to get the little tiny images and round trip


requests are really what causes bad user experiences and slow load time on mobile. So when you


put them all in one request, you save a lot of time. You make it a better experience.


You can also do simple things like compressing and saving your image files correctly to the


exact size that's needed on the page and a low quality, as low as you can get away with


without actually hurting the value of the image. Bigger sites are using image servers


to handle this where the server will recognize the device and send the appropriate image


on the fly. That's super useful for saving time. And then the last one listed here is


responsiveimages.org. This is something that was called out to me specifically by a Googler


as a way to improve mobile usability. And what that is, is it's an HTML5 protocol for


organizing images on a responsive design and it allows you to crop, scale, zoom images


to fit the different renderings of the page. And this is very subtle but very useful because


you can see in the superhero's example, notice the difference between the side of his head,


the left side of his head, and the edge of the picture. That's actually being cropped


at different points to make it fit but still make it look really nice. So compare the desktop


version to either of the phone versions and his head is right up against the side. And


they're doing that with HTML5. The real answer is you have to do all of these things to make


it a good user experience and make the images fast. These things should be all working together


but it's just good to know about for right now. So Dr. Pete alluded to this but there


have been a lot of different changes in the mobile search result page and how they look.


And it's not just the mobile friendly tag, that's a big one, but there have been these


other things that were happening around the same time as the mobile friendly update that


are really important for you to pay attention to. The first thing is obviously we're seeing


more featured information, more answers, more aggregated results, more interactivity. But


Google is also making a big effort to make things easier to see in a mobile search result.


They're putting things in the packs, they're putting things in cards that have expansion


opportunities and they're putting things in carousels. So just easier to perceive and


understand in a quick mobile way. Last, they're trying to be more semantic. They're using


natural language, compound searches, they're using contextual information in a search and


they're trying to do a better job with entity understanding to group information by entity.


And this probably is made easier by the division of labor between the desktop and the smartphone


bot, but that's also making the user experience on the search result much better.


So now the next part of the superhero training is to understand intent. When you're a superhero


you have to understand people's motivations and intent. And what we need to know here


is that Google loves intent. And this is a desktop screenshot where we see that Google


is adapting the order of the top navigation to suit the intent of the searcher. So in


the top example we have a search for cute puppies. When people search for cute puppies


they obviously want images or it's most likely that they want images. But when people search


for something a bit more nebulous like Google Play, images isn't first. They put books and


web shopping apps in that order, but they're trying clearly to in a subtle way give you


a better user experience by anticipating your intent. This is way bigger deal in mobile


because they have more signals about your intent and they know that they have less time.


Google knows that mobile users want the answer fast. So just take a gander at all of these


examples of how Google's trying to understand intent and meet it at the top of the query.


Next, look at how few blue links you see on those pages. This intent stuff is pushing


down web links. And so that's kind of scary. But just remember that device intent or mobile


intent matters. It changes things. It's a ranking factor. And you can even see in Webmaster


Tools that Google is now specifically reporting on the different rankings for mobile, tablet,


and desktop. They're not saying anymore that tablet and desktop are the same. They're not


even trying. They're reporting on it as different and having different rankings. So not just


mobile intent, but device intent. And they're trying to match those up.


So let's talk just about mobile intent for a second. What might indicate mobile intent?


And it's things like voice search, search for apps, local search and map search, all


of those things might give Google a clue that you have a specific intent that you want when


you're searching from your phone. So let's look at a couple different variations on mobile


intent. The answers that Dr. Pete talked about, these are very sensitive to intent. You can


see that we have two very similar queries. One is what is the meaning of life in which


you get a narrative response. And then just meaning of life, which you get a definitional


response. They're trying to anticipate. We have lots of different kinds of answers, featured


rich snippets, and they're trying to answer your question in the best way that they see


possible. We also have this thing that I call answer doubles, which is you're getting the


answer box at the top, but then sometimes the result that has the answer also ranks


number one algorithmically. So you have the same answer repeated one after another in


the answer box and in the first ranking. That's kind of funny and looks like a bug to me.


Whatever. You also see that Google is expanding the meta description to fit the full amount


of the answer, and I think that they're using people as testing to determine which is the


best fit of the answer. So we have it ranging from 134 characters to 340 characters. So


if you have answers or if you're targeting answers, that's a great way to get more space


in the result. We have the interactivity where you can play a video from the mobile search


result without clicking through, or you can favorite something without clicking through.


We have the carousels that give you a lot more rich information very quickly without


scrolling down. Sneaky. And also we have the search boxes in the search result, which is


just a great user perk. You don't have to click through and then search. You can search


directly. That's great. We have the entity results. This is interesting. Look at these


two different searches. One is Pixar Superhero Movie, and Google's like, ah, we know. That's


the Incredibles. But if you search for Incredibles, it's not the top ranking result anymore. The


first ranking result is the Disney result. So they're actually trying to be fair here,


it seems. That's nice of them. We also have the compound queries. In this example, you


see a search for Gotham, and then if you click into one of the Gotham episodes, Google actually


appends that episode name to the original query, and you get a search result. But if


you copy and paste that appended query into a new screen and search for it again, you


get a different search result. And this is because Google is trying to have an additive


or a compound experience where they're getting you closer based on your historical searches.


They're getting you closer to what they think you want. Danny Sullivan wrote an article


about this, which is the implied keywords or contextual keywords you can say when you're


standing under the Eiffel Tower. How tall is it? And enough people have done that that


they anticipate, hey, they're asking about the Eiffel Tower. In a less travel-y way,


you can just type in weather, and Google just assumes that you want the weather where you


are, not where someone else is. Obviously, schema's a big deal, and schema's still driving


mobile rankings. Don't skip out on schema. It drives click through. It makes your results


look great. And schema's how we do things like creating these beautiful crumb trails,


which some people just kind of phone in, but it can be actually very strategic to do a


good job so that people know that they're landing on the right version of the page.


You can see Yankee Candle as actually doing a pretty bad job here because they're saying


Yankee Candle dash mobile instead of saying Yankee Candle scented candles. Here's our


scented candles page. Not great. All right. Now, this is where things shake up a bit.


In your mobile SEO superhero training, what I need you to realize here is that the mobile


friendly algorithm update was interesting, good, cool, will change your job for probably


the rest of your life, but what might have a bigger impact and what I think Google might


have been trying to distract us from was the impact that apps are having on mobile search


results and the bigger impact that they're going to have soon.


I think that Google gave us something to do like make things JavaScript and CSS crawlable


because that's easy so that we wouldn't notice that there are all of these massive new competitors


coming into the mobile search results, taking the positions like Dr. Pete said, up to six


positions are lost to a really big app pack. Six websites don't show up because apps do.


There are a lot of different types of app results and Google's been testing their presentation,


but the main two types of app rankings are app packs, which link over to a download page


for the app within one of the app stores, and then deep links for apps. Those link into


a deep screen within the app. If you don't have the app installed, then they send you


to the store to download it, but will link you deep into the app once you've downloaded


it. What this means is we have Android and iOS specific intent because when you think


about an app pack ranking or a deep link ranking, they're going to show you only apps that you


can download to your phone. There are different apps in the Google Play Store as there are


in the app store, so you have different potential ranking when you search on an iPhone versus


an Android device. Similarly, just because one app has deep links to an iOS app does


not mean there's necessarily a Google Play app with those deep links, but Google has


said that having deep links is a ranking factor and it's a positive ranking factor. If you


have deep links, your stuff is more likely to show up in a mobile search result. These


things are changing from the two different operating systems. This is a great example


where we have an app pack for the same two queries, or for similar queries, it works


for the same queries. We have two different sets of results, one with a big app pack,


one without, and that happens all the time. If you're unfamiliar with deep links, this


is just to run you through what it looks like when you have a deep link. Deep links are


sneaky because they look like regular links, but on an Android phone, this is what it looks


like. If you click a deep link, it will say, do you want to open this with the app or the


website? You can click just once or always, and then the phone remembers that behavior.


What this necessarily means, at least for now, is that, remember I talked about Google


crawling the app and using the desktop page as canonical. To get deep links indexed in


Google, you have to have parity. You have to have corresponding web content for Google


to crawl and count as canonical. We've seen a lot of indications that that is a short-term


solution or that's a short-term thing, and that Google is going to start indexing deep


links that don't have web parity. That means even more potential competitors in your mobile


search result, stuff that you may never even have thought of. So it's scary. Now, deep


links are also interesting. Google, even if you don't care about Google indexing, deep


links can help you if you're doing things like social media shares or trying to rank


in Apple's spotlight search or trying to promote apps in your email and paid campaigns because


that doesn't rely on the Google indexing. You can create deep links and not care about


Google indexing. So go ahead and create the deep links even if not all of your content


has web parity. It'll get you the jump when Google does start indexing those, but also


it'll give you these opportunities. And my colleague Emily Grossman wrote a great article


about getting those things indexed in Apple, Apple search and spotlight. Okay. So that's


the big, big deal. Mobile-friendly and apps. Now, we just need you to maintain your search


status. Now that you've got it, how do you keep it? Just remember mobile search is very


much local, so do a great job if you have any physical locations. Use schema to mark


up other things, not just your website, but also your emails because these are ranking


in Google's results. If you rank on your phone, Google can crawl your Gmail and if it's marked


up, it'll show you the result in line. Not everyone else, just you personally, but this


is going to happen more and more, this kind of stuff. Also remember that Google is trying


to get money, and so they're doing a much better job with mobile-sponsored results.


They look really beautiful and it's harder to tell that they are mobile or that they're


sponsored. So we have more buttons, we have more star rankings, we have bolding, we have


the indented links, and that's a really compelling search result. And the only thing to tell


you that it's sponsored, at least here, is that little tiny eye in the upper right-hand


corner. They could be stealing your traffic. If you don't know what's happening in a mobile-sponsored


situation in your vertical, you absolutely should. It's especially compelling in TV and


media because Google knows that people consume this stuff on their phone. Videos and music


are huge on phones. And especially in Android, the Android device comes with the player,


so you don't even have to download anything to interact with a lot of these results. You


just immediately click through and play. So they're making it a gorgeous result and then


you click through and you get to play it immediately. Also, let's pretend you have an app but it


doesn't rank in any of the app packs that you want it to. That's no problem because


you can have a sponsored app listing that looks awesome, sometimes looks better than


the top of the app pack. Notice the icon, notice the star rankings and reviews, notice


the free button that you can click on to download the app.


Shopping of course comes up a lot in mobile. People use it to price compare. We've had


the carousel for a while and that's easier to spot. It says sponsored, but look at the


one on the right. This looks like a knowledge graph slash shopping result. It is a one product


shopping result knowledge graph thing where we can click through and buy this particular


iPad. Google's also working a lot in travel and they have these feeds that they take in


and they aggregate and those are taking up a lot of space and Danny Sullivan also wrote


an article yesterday about how Google is testing, allowing people to book their hotel room directly


from a Google SERP without clicking through anywhere. Of course, my guess is they're


making money on those deals, right? But these do look like great results.


So I'm going to end kind of where Dr. Pete did, talking about predictive search. Predictive


search is huge. Google Now is huge. It's where I go to know what Google's doing next


and what we're seeing with Google Now and their predictive search is a merging of Chrome,


of Maps, of Google Play. They're all kind of coming together to share information in


a way where you don't actually have to type a search in. Either you're using voice to


submit a query or there are a couple of things that they've been testing that allow you


to do other things. They haven't launched yet. I have articles coming out about click


to search where you can tap on a keyword on any page and execute a search with that. And


that makes things like wearables totally functional, right? All of the predictive search, you don't


have to look like an idiot talking to your watch. And it gives you what you need without


you having to search for it or you use voice. There are no keyboards on the watches right


now. So that's the future. And that's what you've got to watch to maintain your mobile


SEO superhero status. Kumbaya with phones. Thank you.


Wow. Thank you, Sinead. That was probably one of the most actionable talks I've seen


anywhere. So thank you for that. My favorite thing was when you said that Google will serve


you different results if you live in a basement. Okay. So we got some great questions from


Twitter. A question we get all the time. You said Google prefers responsive, right? So


people have an M dot site. Do I change? Is this going to affect my rankings? What does


it mean when Google prefers this? How important is it for us to pursue that?


Google's been pretty clear to say that they prefer responsive design because it's easier


for them to crawl. And if you think about it, when you have an M dot and a desktop site,


there's more potential crawling problems and there's just more to crawl. It's double. So


they would rather you just do one and they'll understand that better and then you don't


have to do with user agent detection and redirection. You don't have to deal with the bidirectional


annotation. There are just more things that can break when you have an M dot. But if you


have an M dot and it's working fine for you, don't go and redesign just to be responsive


because you think it will help your SEO. It might not. You've got to make a business decision


for what is best for your users and go with that.


So if it's not broke, don't fix it.


Yeah, if it's not broke, don't fix it.


So you mentioned you were talking about the fetch and render and you mentioned interstitials.


Am I saying that right? Interstitials?


That's how I say it.


It's one of those words you read but you never pronounce. And we see these all the time when


you're cruising mobile results, ads that are popping up, navigation things that are really


hard to move around. How detrimental do you think those are?


Covering text is a problem. So think about the text that they're covering up and think


about the phrase initial page load. So perhaps, and I can't say that I've tested this, but


what if the interstitial happens when you're lower on the page or after you've been there


for a while? Maybe that's better. Who knows? But Google doesn't like the idea of hidden


text and it's not just the interstitials. Also, if you have Ajax plus boxes or tray


sliders that come in from the top or the bottom or whatever, that text isn't visible. If it's


not visible in fetch and render, then it's probably being discounted. Or if it's behind


an interstitial in fetch and render, it's probably being discounted.


We see those all the time. Another great question from Twitter. So five years ago, everybody


was asking the question, should I build a mobile site or should I get an app? And it


was like an either or sort of question. Now you're talking about actual ranking benefits


from having an app through deep linking. So the question now is everybody's going to ask,


should we get an app now? Should we get an app just to have an app? Or what are some


of the qualifications people should be asking when they're making this decision?


So that decision has a lot, in my mind, to do with resources. Do you have the resources


to build a really great app? And is there a business case for the app? I think if the


app is going to do exactly what the website does, don't waste your time. Do other things


like build other content or have a better UX on your site. Don't waste the development


time and money to do that. But if you have a unique reason to have an app that does something


above and beyond what the website does, I think that's a good reason to build the app


to spend the money. And also, I think right now we require web parity or Google requires


web parity, but I think soon they're not. They already have a form where you can submit


and say we have an app that doesn't have web parity, but we want to get indexed. They're


not saying that they will. They just want to know about it right now. But they're on


the way. And Apple search is already indexing content that doesn't have web parity. And


remember, Apple search, if you're on an iPhone and you start a search and you're getting


spotlight results or the predictive stuff, that's Apple search, that's not Google. They're


cutting in front of Google. And they can surface deep app links that don't have web parity


there, so you might never get to Google. The searcher might never get to Google.


We got a lot more questions that we're not going to have time for. You're on Twitter.


You're awesome on Twitter. You're a mobile moxie. Your contact information is on your


deck, which is available on moz.com right now. Thank you so much. Cindy Crum.


How Does the Local Algorithm Work? - Whiteboard Friday

Hello Moz fans, I'm Joy Hawkins. I run a local SEO agency from Toronto, Canada and a search


forum known as the Local Search Forum which basically is devoted to anything related to


local SEO or local search. Today I'm going to be talking to you about Google's local


algorithm and the three main factors that drive it. So if you're wondering what I'm


talking about when I say the local algorithm, this is the algorithm that fuels what we call


the three pack here. So when you do a local search or a search that Google thinks has


local intent like plumbers, let's say, you traditionally will get three results at the


top with the map and then everything below it I refer to as organic. So this algorithm


I'll be kind of breaking down is what fuels this three pack, also known as Google My Business


listings or Google Maps listings. They're all talking about the exact same thing. So


if you search Google's Help Center on what they look at with ranking these entities,


they tell you that there's three main things that fuel this algorithm. So the three things


that they talk about are proximity, prominence and relevance. So I'm going to basically be


breaking down each one and explaining how the factors work. So I'll kind of start here


with proximity. So proximity is basically defined as your location when you are searching


on your phone or your computer and you type something in, it's where Google thinks you


are located. And if you're not really sure, often you can scroll down to the bottom of


your page and at the bottom of your page it'll often list a zip code that Google thinks you're


in. The other way to tell is if you're on a phone sometimes you can also see a little


blue dot on the map which is exactly where Google thinks you're located. So on a high


level we often think that Google thinks we're located in a city but this is actually pretty


false which I know that there's been actually a lot of talks at MozCon talking about how


Google pretty much always knows a little deeper than that as far as where users are located.


So generally speaking if you're on a computer they know what zip code you're in and they'll


list that at the bottom. There are a variety of tools that can help you check ranking based


on zip codes. Some of which would be Moz, Bright Local, White Spark or Places Scout.


All of these tools have the ability to track at the zip code level. However, when you're


on a phone usually Google knows your location even more detailed and they actually generally


know the geo coordinates of your actual location and they pinpoint this using that little blue


dot. So it knows even more about the zip code. It knows where you're actually located. It's


a bit creepy but there are a couple tools that will actually let you see results based


on geo coordinates which is really cool and very accurate. Those tools include the local


Falcon and there is a Chrome extension which is 100% free that you can put in your browser


called GS Location Changer. I use this all the time in an incognito browser if I want


to just see what search results look like from a very, very specific location. Now these


two levels depending on what industry you are working in it's really important to know


which level you need to be looking at. If you work with lawyers for example zip code


level is usually good enough. There aren't enough lawyers to make a huge difference at


certain like little points inside a given zip code. However, if you work with dentists


or restaurants let's say you really need to be looking at geo coordinate levels. We have


seen lots of cases where we will scan a specific keyword using these two tools and depending


on where in that zip code we are we see completely different three packs. So it's very, very


key to know that this factor here for proximity really influences the results that you see.


And this can be challenging because when you're trying to explain this to clients or business


owners you know they search from their home and they're like why am I not there and it's


because their proximity or their location is different than where their office is located.


So I realize it's a challenging problem to solve for a lot of agency on how to represent


this but that's kind of the tools that you need to look at and use. Moving to the next


factor so prominence this is basically how important Google thinks you are. Like is this


business a big deal or are they just some random you know crappy business or new business


we don't know much about. So this looks at things like links for example, store visits


you know if you are a brick and mortar business and you get no foot traffic Google likely


won't think you're very prominent. Reviews the number of reviews often factors in here


so we often see in cases where businesses have a lot of reviews and a lot of old reviews


they generally have a lot of prominence. Citations can also factor in here due to the number


of citations so that can also factor into prominence. Moving into the relevance factor


relevance is basically does Google think you are related to the query that is typed in.


So you can be as prominent as you know anyone else but if you do not have content on your


page that is structured well that covers the topic the user is searching about your relevance


will be very low and you will run into issues. It's very important to know that these three


things all kind of work together and it's really important to make sure you are looking


at all three. On the relevant end it looks at things like content on site SEO so your


title tags your meta tags all that that nice SEO stuff citations also factor in here because


it looks at things like your address like are you actually in the city are you relevant


to the city that the user is trying to get locations from. Categories are huge here you


know your Google My Business categories Google currently has just under four thousand different


Google My Business categories and they add an insane amount every year and they also


remove ones. So it's very important to keep on top of that and make sure that you have


the correct categories on your listing or you won't rank well. The business name is


unfortunately a huge factor as well in here so merely having keywords in your business


name can often give you relevance to rank it shouldn't but it does and then review content.


So I know Mike Blumenthal did a really cool experiment on this a couple years ago where


he actually had a bunch of people write a bunch of fake reviews on Yelp mentioning certain


terms to see if it would influence ranking on Google in the local results and it did.


So Google is definitely looking at the content inside the reviews to see what words people


are using so they can see how that impacts relevance. So obviously you want all three


of these things it is possible to rank if you don't have all three and I'll give a couple


examples. So if you're looking to expand your radius you know you service a lot of people


you don't just service people on your block you're like I serve the whole city of Chicago


for example. You are not likely going to rank in all of Chicago for very common terms things


like dentist or personal injury attorney. However if you have a lot of prominence and


you have a really relevant page or content related to really niche terms we often see


that it is possible to really expand your radius for long tail keywords which is great


and prominence is probably the number one thing that will expand your radius inside


competitive terms. So we'll often see you know Google bringing in a business that is


slightly outside of the same area as other businesses just because they have an astronomical


number of reviews or maybe their domain authority is ridiculously high and they have all these


linking domains. So those two factors are definitely what influences the amount of area


you cover with your local exposure. On the flip side spam is something I talk a lot about


so fake listings are a big problem in the local search space and fake listings you know


these lead gen providers create these listings and they rank with zero prominence. They have


no prominence they have no citations they have no authority they often don't even have


websites and they still rank because of these two factors. So you know you create a hundred


listings in a city you are going to be close to someone searching and then if you stuff


a bunch of keywords in your business name you will have some relevance and by you know


somehow eliminating the prominence factor they are able to get these listings to rank


which is very frustrating. So obviously Google is kind of trying to evolve this algorithm


over time we are hoping that maybe the prominence factor will increase over time to kind of


eliminate that problem but ultimately we'll have to see what Google does. We also did


a study recently to test to see which of these two factors kind of carries more weight. So


one thing I've kind of highlighted here is when you link to a website inside your Google


My Business listing there is often a debate you know should I link to my home page or


should I link to my location page if I've got you know three or four or five offices.


So we did an experiment to see what happens when we switch a client's Google My Business


listing from their location page to their home page and we've pretty much almost always


seen a positive impact by switching to the home page even if that home page is not relevant


at all. So in one example we had a client that was in Houston and they opened up a location


in Dallas their home page was optimized for Houston but their location page was optimized


for Dallas and I know I had a conversation with like a couple other SEOs and they were


like oh well obviously linked to the Dallas page on the Dallas listing that makes perfect


sense but we were wondering what would happen if we linked to the home page which is optimized


for Houston and we saw a lift in rankings and a lift in the number of search queries


that this business showed for when we switched to the home page even though the home page


didn't really mention Dallas at all. So something to think about you know make sure you're always


testing these different factors and chasing the right ones when you're coming up with


your local SEO strategy. And finally something I'll mention at the top here as far as you


know the local algorithm versus the organic algorithm some of you might be thinking okay


like these things really look the same factors they really kind of sort of work the same


way and honestly if that is your thinking I would really strongly recommend you change


it. I'll quote this is from a Moz white paper that they did recently where they found that


only 8% of local pack listings had their website also appearing in the organic search results


below. So I feel like the overlap between these two is definitely shrinking which is


kind of why I'm a bit obsessed you know figuring out how the local algorithm works to make


sure that we can have you know clients successful in both spaces. So hopefully you learned something


Why Net Neutrality Matters - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're taking a departure from our usual SEO tactics, marketing tactics, to talk


for a minute about net neutrality.


Net neutrality is actually something that is hugely critical and massively important


to web marketers, especially those of us who help small and medium businesses, local businesses,


and websites that aren't in the top 100 most popular sites and wealthiest sites on the


web.


The reason that we're going to talk net neutrality is because for the first time in a while it's


actually at high risk and there are some things that we might be able to do about it.


And by protecting net neutrality, especially here in the United States, although this is


true all over the world wherever you might be, we can actually help to preserve our jobs


and our roles as marketers.


I'll talk you through it in just a sec.


So to start off, you might be asking yourself, okay, Rand, I might have heard of net neutrality,


but explain to me what it is.


I'm going to give you a very basic introduction and then I'll invite you to dig deeper into


it.


But essentially net neutrality is this idea that as a user of the internet through my


internet service provider, that might be through my cell phone network, that might be through


my home internet provider, through my internet provider at work, these ISPs, a Verizon or


a Comcast or a Cox or a T-Mobile or AT&T, those are all here in the United States and


there's plenty others overseas, you essentially can get access to the whole web equally, meaning


that these ISPs are not regulating download speed based on someone paying them more or


less or based on a website being favored by them or owned by them or invested in by them.


Essentially when you get access to the web, you get access to it equally.


There's equality and neutrality for the entire internet.


In a non-neutrality scenario, you can see my little fellow here is very unhappy because


his ISP is essentially regulating and saying, hey, if you want to pay us 50 bucks a month,


you can have access to Google, Facebook, Twitter and MSN.


Then if you want to pay a little bit more, 100 bucks a month, you can get access to all


these second tier sites and we'll let you visit those and use those services.


If you want to pay us $150 a month, you can get access to all websites.


This is just one model of how a non-neutrality situation might work.


There's a bunch of other ones.


This is probably not the most realistic one and it might be slightly hyperbolic, but the


idea behind it is always the same, that essentially the ISP can work however they'd like.


They are not bound by government rules and regulations requiring them to serve the entire


web equally.


If you're an ISP, you can imagine that this is a wonderful scenario.


If I'm AT&T or I'm Verizon, I might be maxing out how much money I can make from consumers


and I'm constantly having to be competitive against other ISPs, but if I can do this,


I can then have a bunch more vectors, A, to get money from all these different websites


and web services and B, to charge consumers much more based on tiering their access.


This is wonderful for me, which is why ISPs like Comcast and Verizon and AT&T and Cox


and all these others have put a lot of money towards lobbyists to try and change the opinions


of the federal government and that's mostly, well, in the United States right now, it's


the Republican administration and the folks in Congress and the federal communications


chair who is Ajit Pai, recently selected by Trump as the new FCC chair.


Reasons that you should care about this as a web marketer are, first off, equal footing


for web access creates a more even playing field.


That means greater competition.


It allows websites to compete with each other without having to pay and without having to


only serve different consumers who may be paying different rates to their ISPs.


It also means more players because anyone can enter the field simply by registering


a website and hosting it.


You're now on an even playing field technically with everyone, with Google, with Facebook,


with Microsoft, with Amazon.


You get the same access, at least at the fundamental ISP level, with everyone else on the internet.


That means there's a lot more demand for competitive web marketing services because there are many


more businesses who need to compete and who can compete.


There's also much less of an inherent advantage for these big established rich players.


If you're a very, very rich website, you have tons of money, you have tons of resources,


lots of influence, it's easy to say, hey, I'm not going to worry about this because


I know I can always be in this lowest tier or whatever they're providing for free because


I can pay the ISP and I can influence government rules and regulations and I can connect with


all the different ISPs out there, make sure I'm always accessible.


For a small website, that's a nightmare scenario, incredibly hard, and it makes a huge competitive


advantage by being big and established already, which means it's much tougher to get started.


Second, the costs of getting started online are much lower under net neutrality.


You don't have to currently, if you register your website, you start doing your hosting,


you don't need to pay off any ISPs.


You don't need to go approach Comcast or Verizon or an ATT or Cox or anybody like this and


say, hey, we would like to get onto your high speed, fastest tier, best access plan.


You don't have to do that because net neutrality, the law of the land means that you are automatically


guaranteed that.


There's also no separate process, right?


It's not just the cost, it's also the work involved to go to these ISPs.


There are several hundred ISPs with hundreds of thousands of active customers in the United


States today.


That number has generally been shrinking as that industry has been consolidating a little


bit more, but still, that's a very, very challenging thing to have to do.


If you are a big insurance provider, it's one thing to have someone go manage that task,


but if you're a brand new startup website, that's entirely another to try and do that.


Third, the talent, the strategy, the quality of products and services and marketing that


a new company, a new website has are going to create winners and losers in their field


today versus this potentially non-neutrality situation where it's not quite a rigged system,


but I'm calling it a rigged system a little bit because of this built-in advantage that


you have for money and influence.


I think we would all generally agree that in 2017 in late-stage capitalist societies


that generally speaking there's already a huge advantage by having a lot of money and


influence.


I'm not sure those with money and influence necessarily need another leg up on entrepreneurs


and startups and folks who are trying to compete on the web.


Maybe you'll disagree, but I think that these together make a very compelling case scenario.


Here's what might actually happen.


Most observers of the space think that fast lanes would become a default.


Fast lanes meaning that certain tiers, certain parts of the web, certain web services and


companies would get fast access.


Others would be slower or potentially even disallowed on certain ISPs.


That would create some real challenges.


Second, there would probably be some free and some paid services.


You can see T-Mobile actually tried to do this recently where they basically said, hey,


if you are on a T-Mobile device, even if you're paying us the smallest amount, we're going


to allow you to access these certain things.


I think it was a video service for free.


Essentially that currently is against the rules.


You might say, Rand, that seems unfair.


Why shouldn't T-Mobile be able to offer some access to the web for free and then you just


have to pay for the rest of it?


I hear you.


I think unfortunately that's a bit of a red herring because that particular implementation


of a non-neutral situation is not that bad.


It's not particularly bad for consumers.


It's not particularly bad for businesses.


If T-Mobile just charged their normal rate and then they happen to have this, oh, by


the way, here you get this little portion of the web for free, no one's going to complain


about that.


It's not particularly terrible.


But it does violate net neutrality and it is a very slippery slope to a world like this,


a very painful world for a lot of people.


That's why we're willing to sort of take the sacrifices of saying, hey, we don't want to


allow this because it violates the principle and the law of net neutrality.


Then the third thing that would almost certainly happen is that there would be payoffs.


There would be payoffs on both sides.


You have to pay more as a consumer to your ISP in order to access the web in the way


that you do today and as a website in order to reach consumers who maybe can't afford


or choose not to pay more, you have to pay off the ISP to get that full access.


Why am I bringing this up now?


Why is the risk so high?


Well, it turns out that the new American administration has basically come out against net neutrality


in a very aggressive fashion.


The new FCC chair, Ajit Pai, has been fighting this pretty hard.


He's made a bunch of statements just in the last few days.


He actually overturned some rulings from years past that enabled smaller ISPs or that asked


smaller ISPs to be transparent about their net neutrality practices and that's been overturned.


He's arguing this basically under what I'm going to call a guise of free markets and


competitive marketplaces.


I think that is a total misnomer.


This creates a truly equal marketplace for everyone.


While it is somewhat restrictive, I think one of the most interesting things to observe


about this is that this is a nonpolitical issue or at least not a very politicized issue


for most of American voters.


Actually 81% of Democrats in a Gallup survey said that they support net neutrality and


an even greater percent of Republicans, 85%, said that they support net neutrality.


So really you have virtually an overwhelming swath of voters in the United States who are


saying this should be the law of the land and the reason that this is generally being


fought against by both Congress and the FCC is because these ISPs, these big ISPs have


a lot of money and they've paid a lot of lobbying dollars to try and influence politics.


For those of you outside the United States, I know that sounds like it should be illegal.


It's not in our country.


I know it's illegal in most democracies but it's sort of how democracy in the United States


works.


If you want to take some action on this and fight back and tell your congressperson, your


senator, your representatives locally and federally that you are against this, I would


check out savetheinternet.com for those folks who are in the United States.


For whatever country you're in, I would urge you to search for support net neutrality and


check out the initiatives that may be available in your country or your geography locally


so that you can take some action.


This is something that we've fought against as internet users in the past and as businesses


on the web before and I think we're going to have to renew that fight in order to maintain


the status quo and keep equal footing with each other.


This will help us preserve our careers in web marketing but it will also help preserve


an open, free, competitive internet.


I think that's something we can all agree is very important.


All right, thanks everyone.


Look forward to your comments.


Certainly open to your critiques.


Please try and keep them as kosher and as kind as you can.


I know when it gets into political territory it can be a little frustrating and we will


see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


8 Old School SEO Practices That Are No Longer Effective - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat about some old-school SEO practices that just don't work anymore,


and things with which we should replace them.


Let's start with the first one, keywords before clicks.


So look, I get the appeal here, the idea is that we've done a bunch of keyword research,


now we're doing keyword targeting, and we can see that it might be important to target


multiple keywords on the same page.


So FYI, pipe smoking, tobacco smoking, very dangerous for your health, not recommended


by me or by Moz, but I thought it was a funny throwback keyword, and so there you go.


And I do enjoy the little implements, even if I never use them.


So pipes, tobacco pipes, pipe smoking, wooden pipes, this is not going to draw anyone's


click.


You might think, but it's good SEO, Rand, it's good to have all my keywords in my title


element, I know that's an important part of SEO.


Not anymore.


It really is not anymore an important, well, let's put it this way, it's an important part


of SEO which is subsumed by wanting to draw the clicks, right?


The user is searching, they're looking at the page, and what are they going to think


when they see pipes, tobacco pipes, pipe smoking, wooden pipes?


They have associations with that, spammy, sketchy, I don't want to click it, and we


know as SEOs that Google is using click signals to help documents rank over time and to help


websites rank over time.


So if they're judging this, you're going to fall in the rankings, right?


Versus a title like art of piping, studying wooden pipes for every price range.


Now you're not just playing off the yes, I am including some keywords in there, right,


I have wooden and pipes, I have art of piping which is maybe my brand name, but I'm worried


more about drawing the click which is why I'm making this part of my message of for


every price range, and I'm using the word stunning, right, to draw people in.


And I'm saying our collection is not the largest, but the hand selected best.


You'll find unique pipes available nowhere else and always free fast shipping.


I'm essentially trying to create a message like I would for an AdWords ad that is less


focused on just having the raw keywords in there and more focused on drawing the click.


This is a far more effective approach that we've seen over the last few years.


Probably been a good six or seven years that this has been vastly superior to this other


approach.


Second one, heavy use of anchor text on internal links.


This used to be a practice that could have positive impacts on rankings, but what we've


seen lately, especially the last few years, is that Google has discounted this and has


actually even punished it where they feel like it's inappropriate or spammy, manipulative,


overdone.


We talked about this a little in our internal and external linking Whiteboard Friday a couple


weeks back.


In this case, my suggestion would be if the internal link is in the navigation, if it's


in the footer, if it's in a sidebar, if it's inside content, and it is relevant and well


written and it flows well, has high usability, you're pretty safe.


However, if it has low usability, if it looks sketchy or funny, if you're making the font


small so as to hide it because it's really for search engines and not for searchers and


users, now you're in a sketchy place.


You might count on being discounted, penalized, hurt at some point by Google.


Number three, pages for every keyword variant.


This is an SEO tactic that many folks are still pursuing today and that had been effective


for a very long time.


The idea was basically if I have any variation of a keyword, I want a single page to target


that because keyword targeting is such a precise art and technical science that I want to have


the maximum capacity to target each keyword individually, even if it's only slightly different


from another one.


This still worked even up to four or five years ago and in some cases, people were sacrificing


usability because they saw it still worked.


Nowadays, Google has gotten so smart with upgrades like Hummingbird, obviously with


RankBrain last year, that they've taken to a much more intent and topic matching model.


We don't want to do something like have four different pages like unique hand-carved pipes,


hand-carved pipes, hand-carved tobacco pipes, and hand-carved tobacco smoking pipes.


By the way, these are all real searches that you'll find in Google Suggest or AdWords.


Rather than taking all of these and having a separate page for each, I want one page


targeting all of them.


I might try and fit these keywords intelligently into the content, the headline, maybe the


title, the meta description, those kinds of things.


I'm sure I can find a good combination of these, but the intent for each of these searchers


is the same, so I only want one page targeting them.


Number four, every single one of these link building, link acquisition techniques that


I'm about to mention has either been directly penalized by Google or penalized as part of


an update or we've seen sites get hit hard for doing it.


This is dangerous stuff and you want to stay away from all of these at this point.


Directories, well, generic directories and SEO directories for sure.


Article links, especially article blasts where you can push an article in and there's no


editorial review.


Guest content, depending on the editorial practices of the board, might be a little


different.


Press releases, Google, you saw, penalized some press release websites.


Well, it didn't penalize the press release website.


It said, you know what?


Your links don't count anymore or we're going to discount them.


We're not going to treat them the same.


Comment links, for obvious reasons.


Reciprocal link pages, those got penalized many years ago.


Article spinners, private link networks.


You see private and network?


You see network, you should generally run away.


Private blog networks, paid link networks, Fiverr or forum link buys, right?


You see advertised on all sorts of SEO forums, especially the more aggressive sketchy ones


that a lot of folks are like, hey, for $99, we have this amazing package and I'll show


you all the people whose rankings it's increased and they come from PageRank 6.


Never mind that PageRank is totally defunct.


Or worse, they use Moz, right?


They'll say, like, domain authority 60 plus websites.


You know what?


Moz is not perfect.


Domain authority is not a perfect representation of the value you're going to get from these


things.


And anyone who's selling you links on a forum, you should be super skeptical, right?


That's somewhat like someone going up to your house and being like, hey, I got this Ferrari


in the yard here.


You want to buy this?


That's my jersey coming out.


Social link buys, anything like this.


Just say no, people.


All right.


Number five, multiple microsites, separate domains, or separate domains with the same


audience or topic target.


So this, again, used to be a very common SEO practice where folks would say, hey, I'm going


to split these up because I can get very micro-targeted with my individual websites.


They were often keyword rich domain names like woodenpipes.com and I've got handmadepipes.net


and I've got pipesofmexico.co.


Well, versus, I just have artofpiping.com.


Not that piping is necessarily the right word, but artofpiping.com.


And then it includes all of the content from all of these.


The benefit here is that this is going to gain domain authority much faster and much


better and in a far greater fashion than any of these will.


So let's say that it was possible that there was no bias against exact match domain names.


Folks were happy to link to them.


And you had just as much success branding each of these and earning links to each of


these and doing content marketing on each of these as you did on this one.


But you split up your efforts a third, a third, a third.


Guess what would happen?


These would rank about a third as well as all the content would on here, which means


the content on handmadepipes.net is not benefiting from the links and content on woodenpipes.com.


And that sucks.


You want to combine your efforts into one domain if you possibly can.


This is one of the reasons we also recommend against subdomains and microsites because


putting all of your efforts into one place has the best shot at earning you the most


rankings for all of the content you create.


Number six, exact and partial keyword match domain names in general.


Like we talked about up here.


It's the case like if I'm a consumer and I'm looking at domain names like woodenpipes.com,


handmadepipes.net, uniquepipes.shop, hand-carved-pipes.co, the problem is that over time, over the last


15, 20 years of the web, those types of domain names that don't sound like real brands, that


are not in our memories and don't have positive associations with them, they're going to draw


clicks away from you and towards your competitors who sound more credible, more competent, and


more branded.


For that reason alone, you should avoid them.


It's also the case that we've seen that these types of domains do much more poorly with


link earning, with content marketing, with being able to have guest content accepted.


People don't trust it.


The same is true for public relations and getting press mentions.


The press doesn't trust sites like these.


For those reasons, it's just a barrier.


Even if you thought, hey, there's still keyword benefits to these, which there is a little


bit because the anchor text that comes with them that points to the site always includes


the words and phrases you're going after.


There's a little bit of benefit, but it's far overwhelmed by the really frustrating


speed bumps and roadblocks that you face when you have a domain like this.


Number seven.


A lot of folks, when they're doing keyword research, for some reason still have this


idea that using cost per click or AdWords' competition scores can help determine the


difficulty of ranking in organic, non-paid results.


This is totally wrong.


See, right here I've got hand-carved pipes and unique wooden pipes.


They have an AdWords CPC, respectively, of $3.80 and $5.50.


They have AdWords' competition of medium and medium.


That is in no way correlated necessarily with how difficult they'll be to rank for in the


organic results.


I could find, for example, that unique wooden pipes is actually easier or harder than hand-carved


pipes to rank for in the organic SEO results.


This really depends on who's in the competition set, what types of links do they have, and


social mentions that they have, how robust is their content, how much are they exciting


visitors and drawing them in and serving them well.


That sort of stuff is really hard to calculate here.


I like the keyword difficulty score that Moz uses.


Some other tools have their own versions.


Dr. Pete, I think, did a wonderful job of putting together a keyword difficulty score


that's relatively comprehensive and well thought through, uses a lot of the metrics about the


domain and the page authority scores and compensates for a lot of other things to look at a set


of search results and say, this is probably about how hard it's going to be and whether


it's harder or easier than some other keyword.


Last one.


Some folks are still engaging in this, I think, because content strategy, content marketing,


and content as a whole has become a very hot topic and a point of investment.


Many SEOs still invest in what I call non-strategic and unfocused link bait.


The idea being, if I can draw links to my website, it doesn't really matter if the content


doesn't make people very happy or if it doesn't match and gel well with what's on my site.


You see a lot of these types of practices on sites that have nothing to do with it.


Here's seven actors who one time wore too little clothing.


That's an extreme example, but you get the idea if you ever look at the bottom ads for


a lot of content stuff, it feels like pretty much all of them say that.


Versus on-topic link bait, or what I'd call high-quality content that is likely to draw


in links and attention and create a positive branding association.


Here's the popularity of pipes, cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, and cigars in the US


from 1950 to today.


We've got the data over time and we've mapped that out.


This is likely to earn a lot of links, press attention, people would check it out.


They'd go, oh, when was it that electronic cigarettes started getting popular?


Have pipes really fallen off?


It feels like no one uses them anymore.


I don't see them in public.


When was that?


Why was that?


Can I go over time and see that data set?


This is fundamentally interesting and data journalism obviously very hot right now.


With these eight, hopefully you'll be able to switch from some old school SEO techniques


that don't work so well to some new ways of thinking that will take your SEO results to


a great place.


With that, we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


Daily SEO Fix: Investigating Keyword Cannibalization- Episode #2

Hi there, my name is Emily and I work as a learning and development specialist at Moz.


A simple way to investigate keyword cannibalisation on your site is to use Moz Pro.


You'll need a subscription to access this.


Firstly head to Keyword Explorer, click on ranking keywords from the left navigation


and type in your website URL.


Select your audience's location and click analyze.


You can use the icon on the right to expand the dropdown to reveal additional ranking


positions for this same keyword.


If you hover your mouse over the eye, you'll be able to see the exact URL ranking for this


keyword.


These are your URLs with potential keyword cannibalisation.


Now you know how to investigate keyword cannibalisation with Moz Pro.


MozCon 2015 - 11 - Surviving Google: SEO in 2020 with Pete Meyers

Good morning, MozCon.


My fourth time up here.


It's great to be back.


Thank you for having me back.


I love you guys and I could be all mushy for five minutes, but it's going to move fast


today and so I need to get started, so buckle in.


I want to take you on a journey today into the near future.


And unlike my friend Barry Allen, I can't run so fast that I travel through time, so


I have to cheat a little bit.


And how we cheat is this.


I watch what Google's doing.


I watch what they have done in the recent past.


And I think sometimes as SEOs and as marketers, we see what they do and all we do is react.


We look at our rankings and we go, what do I do now and what did they do and what did


they do to me and why did it go up and why did it go down?


And we don't see the story behind what they're doing.


And so today what I'd like to do is take a few themes, show you what's happened in the


last few months, in the last year, and try to show you the philosophy behind that and


where it's going to take us in the next couple of years and hopefully a little bit about


what we can do about that.


I have been accused of scaring people in some of my talks and I'm going to try and make


it a little actionable, but it might be a little scary too.


So a little nostalgia first of all.


This is the good old days.


Remember 10 Blue Links?


It was all organic.


You have to have some pretty weird boring queries like boring SEO blog ideas today to


see 10 Blue Links.


Even a search for 10 Blue Links brings up paid results.


I don't know, I guess this is a chain link fence.


I don't know why you would have this.


I want you to note here that Google is selling links on this page.


So you want to point that out to them?


Come on Google, what are you doing?


But today too often what we're more likely to see is something like this.


Obviously a very competitive commercial query for wedding rings.


We've got ads on the top, we've got ads on the side, we've got a huge paid shopping block,


we have an answer box, what Google calls a featured snippet, the new answer box.


And there in the bottom left is almost one entire organic result.


This is a high-risk screen, I'm not cheating on these.


And you see that more about wedding rings, so if you were to click on that, then we have


no organic at all on this page.


And yes, I'm cherry picking a little bit.


I'm going to show you, you know, the worst just for fun.


But you may be thinking this is the exception and I want to show you that it's not.


So I want to take you through some data really quickly.


This is data from about two weeks ago, the very end of June.


This is from the MOSCAS 10K, so this is 10,000 keywords, pretty fairly distributed across


competition and volume.


They're fairly commercial.


So if we look at just SERPs with verticals, news results, image, in-depth, almost half


of the 10,000 SERPs in our set have some kind of vertical.


We add in the Knowledge Graph, knowledge panels on the right, knowledge cards at the top,


featured snippets, the new ones, we're up to 64%, almost two-thirds of the SERPs in


our set have either verticals, Knowledge Graph or both.


We add in what I call enhancements, so this is video thumbnails, the mega videos, the


big ones at the top, review stars, site links, which should really dominate the number one


position.


We're up to four out of five, 80% have one or more of these features.


We add in local, local traditional packs, one box and snack packs, 82%.


I don't want you to think that that means local is only 2%, this is additive.


Local in our set is about 15%.


But what it's showing you is that many of these SERPs have more than one element.


And if we add in paid, adwords and shopping, we're up to 97%.


So 97 out of 100 of the SERPs in our dataset do not have 10 blue links, only 3% do.


So this is not the exception, this is our new reality.