that they just bought right. There's lots of things you can do with Google Tag Manager and


Measuring Website Engagement — Whiteboard Friday

reading different parameter outputs and URLs and then making decisions based on what's shown or not


shown based on what's in those URLs and that's again an easy way to improve things without


necessarily having to measure a lot of engagement that's just using the tools that you already have


access to in order to make the user experience better for the people coming to your website.


So hopefully some of this measurement stuff the ways to measure ways to improve things


will help you build a better website experience and maybe you still do need a new website maybe


the website you have is difficult to manage and it's really expensive or it's a big old flaming


pile of trash like who knows what could be wrong with it but don't throw it out just yet if you're


not sure measure some stuff first and then make a call whether or not it's time to do your website.


How to Influence Branded Searches and Search Volumes to Earn Big Rewards - Whiteboard Friday

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


This week we're going to chat a little bit about how to influence branded search and


get a load of benefit out of that.


Some of these things that I'm going to talk about today are more theoretical, like we


think they work, we've experimented, we've seen some other folks experiment, and we're


pretty sure.


And then some of them are solid.


We know that these things influence.


But regardless, I think I can persuade you that trying to turn more of your unbranded


search into branded search is a hugely positive thing.


And generating more branded search in general is also hugely positive.


Let me show you what I mean with some examples first.


So non-branded search.


These are essentially the search terms, the queries, and phrases that we are all pursuing.


We're trying to rank for them.


This is searchers who have not yet expressed a brand preference.


They're searching, let's say we're talking to a chemist or a lab instructor at a school,


and they're trying to put together all their materials for their labs.


So they're searching for things like test tubes and lab equipment and chemical safety


goggles.


They're trying to figure out the best prices and the best products, the ones that will


be the safest, the ones that will be best for their class.


Those are unbranded.


They have expressed no brand preference.


They haven't said, oh, I want a this kind and I know that.


Branded searches is more like, oh, I know I want a Fisher test tube, right?


Fisher Scientific.


So Fisher test tubes is what I'm looking for.


Or lab equipment from Thermo.


Thermo Scientific makes a bunch of lab equipment that you can buy pre-packaged kind of all


together.


Or chemical goggles, I know I want the 3M variety, right?


3M has like this awesome chemical goggles.


They're very safe, very good for this stuff.


So these branded searches are preferable in many ways for the brands that own and control


these companies than the non-branded searches.


And here's why.


First off, obviously, it is way, way easier to rank well for 3M chemical goggles if you


are 3M than ranking for just chemical goggles if you're 3M, right?


You're competing against far fewer folks.


A lot of people won't even use your brand name, even the people who do, like maybe on


Amazon.com, you'll still get some benefit from that because they're searching for your


brand.


It also increases the propensity to convert, meaning that if someone performs that branded


search, they're more likely to actually buy that product.


They're generally speaking further down the funnel.


They've sort of decided to at least investigate your brand and now you have a chance to pitch


them.


They're familiar.


They know your brand name at least.


That's a real positive thing.


Second thing that's nice is you can affect search suggest, meaning that if lots of people,


for example, started searching for 3M chemical goggles instead of chemical safety goggles


or chemical goggles, it would actually be the case that over time what you'd see Google


do is in the dropdown box for chemical safety goggles, 3M, the word, would start to be associated


with it.


You'd see that in search suggest.


It might be at the very bottom, like for example, if you do a search for whiteboard today in


Google, whiteboard Friday is somewhere on that list, but it's usually way down towards


the bottom.


In some geographies, it's probably not there at all.


Over time, if we get more and more people searching for whiteboard Friday, it'll move


up in search suggest.


That means people will be more likely to perform that query.


At least they'll see it and say, oh, that must be a brand or I must have some association


with that or maybe I'm supposed to or I want to investigate that.


I'm curious about it.


Third thing, we believe this is one of those speculative things.


We believe that right now search volume for branded terms does have an impact on ranking


for the non-branded version of the query.


The reason is because of, well, we saw Google file some patents around this, but we also


saw some tests in this direction that looked promising, basically saying that if—let's


do Fisher for this one.


Let's say people start searching for Fisher test tubes a lot more.


They may actually find—Google might say, you know, I think Fisher is very relevant


to the search query test tubes.


Let's move Fisher up in the rankings for just the unbranded phrase test tubes because that


volume is suggesting to us that this brand is more relevant to this query than maybe


we initially presumed.


That's huge as well, right?


If you can drive up that search volume, now you can start to get benefit in the non-branded


things.


Dee, you can appear in the related search feature.


Related searches is usually somewhere between the middle of the page and the very bottom


of the page, most of the time at the very bottom of the search page.


But that's a powerful way, right, for those 10 to 20 percent of people that scroll all


the way to the bottom before making a click selection or before deciding to change their


query.


Those related searches are a powerful way to suggest, just like search suggest is, that


they should instead of searching for the non-branded term, search for your branded query.


The related searches, by the way, is also, we think, influenced by content, which I'll


talk about in a second.


E, create an entity style association.


So this is essentially the idea of co-occurring keywords, right?


If Google is crawling the web and they see tons of documents, high quality trustworthy


documents that contain the word test tubes that also contain the word 3M, oftentimes


in close proximity to the word test tubes, they'll over time start to associate the word


test tubes with the word 3M.


That can impact suggest, it can impact related, it can impact rankings.


It has a bunch of positive potential impacts, and that can make you more relevant for all


sorts of things around search that are just awesome.


And then the last one, which is also cool and powerful, is that this can affect search


personalization.


Meaning, for example, let's say someone does a search for 3M chemical goggles.


They click on 3M.com, and maybe they buy them, maybe they don't.


Next time they do a search for, for example, let's say aprons, right, chemical aprons.


Well, it turns out that Google already knows that person has visited 3M in the past.


They might see that behavior, and because they're logged into their account, they might


show them 3M higher up in the rankings.


They might show them 3M higher in the search suggest, right, as they start typing.


That personalization is another powerful way that you're getting benefit from branded search.


So there's all these benefits, right?


We want to make this happen.


How do we do it?


What are the tactics that an SEO can actually use?


Turns out, SEOs, we're going to have to work pretty cross-departmentally in our marketing


teams to be able to make this happen, because some of the best tactics require things that


SEO doesn't always own and control entirely.


Sometimes you do, sometimes not.


First one, if we can create curiosity and drive search volume via brand advertising,


that's an awesome way to go.


You've seen more and more of this.


You'll start to see, you know, you have seen advertisements probably on television and


YouTube ads.


You've seen branded ads on display ads.


You've probably heard things on the radio that say, search for us, right, all that kind


of stuff.


But classic media, everything from billboards to radio, I know, I'm drawing televisions


with rabbit ears still.


There's probably no TVs in the US that still have rabbit ears.


Magazines, print, whatever, you know, billboards, all of that brand advertising can drive people


to then be curious about the brand and to want to investigate them more.


If you hear a lot about 3M Goggles and the cool stuff they're doing, well, you might


be tempted to perform a search.


You can embed searches as well.


Be careful with this one.


This can get spammy and manipulative and could get you into trouble, but you can do it in,


if you do it in authentic white hat ways, you'll probably be okay.


The idea is basically telling customers like, hey, if you want to research us, learn more


about 3M Goggles, don't just take our word for it.


Search Google, right?


Go find what people are saying, what reviews are saying about our product, right?


And you see, I think it was LG or Samsung ran a big one of these where they were suggesting


people do a Google search because it turns out their phone had been very, very highly


rated by all the top folks who had done a review of them.


You can do that in email, you could do it over social networks, you could do it in content,


and you're essentially driving people directly to the Google search result page.


That could be an embedded link or it simply could be a suggestion to search and check


people out.


You can also use, very similarly, right, public relations and content marketing, especially


guest contributions in content marketing.


You can use events and sponsorship, all of that stuff, to essentially drive latent interest


and curiosity, kind of like we did with brand advertising, but in a little more organic


fashion.


You know, if the New York Times writes a piece about you, if you speak at a conference, this


is me, you know, wildly gesticulating at a conference.


Looks like I'm very dangerously, precariously perched to fall into the crowd there.


Guest contributions on a website, maybe something like a fortune.com, which takes some guest


posts and driving people to want to learn more about the brand or the product that you've


mentioned.


Then, finally, you can create those keyword associations that we talked about, right,


the entity style associations, through essentially you're looking at word proximity and co-occurrence


in web documents.


I put just web documents here, but really it's important, trustworthy web documents


from sources that Google likes and trusts and indexes.


That means looking at where are all the places potentially on the web that lab equipment


is talked about or would be talked about, maybe in the future, and how do I influence


those authors, those creators, those publications to potentially consider including my brand,


Thermo Scientific, in their documents, or how do I create content for places like these


that include my brand and include the unbranded term, lab equipment.


A bunch of tactics, a bunch of great opportunities here.


I'd love to hear from you folks about what you've done around influencing branded search


and how you've seen it affect your SEO campaigns overall.


I look forward to catching up with you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard


Friday.


MozCon 2014 - 28 - Rand Fishkin - Mad Science Experiments in SEO & Social Media

I am so thrilled that you all stayed to see this presentation.


I hope that it is going to prove fascinating and glavin'


enough for all of you.


I will be channeling my best professor, Frank, if I can.


So we have so much to get through


that I don't have a ton of time to start.


But we do have a place where you can download.


So I know you've been on your laptops all day.


You've been answering email.


It is the end of the day.


You don't need to tweet.


You don't need to Facebook.


You don't need to answer that client report they can wait.


bit.ly slash mazmadscience will get you all the deck.


And this is a text heavy deck, which is something


I don't like to do.


But this requires a lot of detail


because I have run some experiments here


that if you don't understand the context behind them


and you don't have that, when you go back to your teams,


when you go back to your clients,


you could misinterpret something.


I would hate for that to happen.


All right, three caveats.


Number one, I am not a scientist.


Not a scientist, not performing professional science,


this is mad science.


Number two, search engines and social platforms change.


You know this.


These results will likely change as well.


Please don't count on the results


I'm going to show you being something that always


doesn't forever hold true or that two years from now you


look back and you're like, well, we're


going to test this nofollow link thing and this is what it does.


This is why we have to maintain.


And caveat number three, I get really excited


about this stuff.


I am a huge dork for it.


Do not conflate my excitement with accuracy


and perfect information.


Please.


OK, let's do it.


I'm going to start with some fun one-off examples.


These are not like, these are the even less science-y


than the more science-y stuff I'll show you.


So Google stuck a fork in guest blogging, right?


Here's Matt Cutts, oh yeah, decay and fall


of guest blogging for SEO.


Well, Google's the big grizzly bear.


They tell us, and we got to listen, right?


But look, Darren Rouse sent me this email.


He's like, hey, you're coming to our conference


later this year in Australia?


We would love to have you guest post.


What do you think I did?


Excellent.


OK, let's put up a guest post.


Publish your blog post without SEO and thousands of visits


will be forever lost.


You know how many links I jam-packed in this thing?


Like, exact links pointing to our pages,


just because I was like, you know what?


Come at me, bro.


And then I had to do this.


Yo, Matt Cutts, bring me the penalty.


Bring it on.


Poke.


You know what happened?


Nothing.


Nothing happened.


OK, actually, that's not entirely true.


I don't know, Cyrus and Trevor, if you guys saw,


but some of our rankings went a little up.


Because Problogger, that link, those links are awesome.


Guest posting.


Is it dead?


Yes, it is totally dead if you don't understand


the difference between what Matt Cutts doesn't want you to do


and what he's fine with you doing,


even if you poke him like a bear.


I was actually a little surprised


he didn't respond and be like, those links


are a little on the borderline, mister.


Like, that's how I would have responded if I were him.


All right.


So you guys have probably seen this, right?


Google took away author pictures from Google Authorship.


And people started wondering, hey, man,


is that because our author pictures were distracting


Google searchers from clicking on AdWords?


Look, that was my theory, too.


I saw it.


I had an emotional reaction.


And I tweeted this.


In my opinion, the most compelling explanation


for Google removing profile pics from search


is, in fact, that it distracted from ads and cost advertisers


clicks.


It's an emotional reaction.


It is not a wholly logical reaction


when I think about it.


More broadly, there are other potential explanations.


But I really love and appreciate Larry Kim from WordStream.


I think no one in our industry right now


is doing more to further the cause of backing up


their work, their theories, with real data.


And this is not perfect data.


Larry's not a scientist either.


But man, it is really nice to have


someone publicly, transparently publishing data like he does.


And here you go.


WordStream's blog, he's looking at Google remover.


They ranked well for negative keywords, right?


Or they're bidding on negative keywords.


They're the only ad on the page.


Four authorship profiles in the top 10.


What happened?


Two weeks before, two weeks after.


There you go.


Ad click-through rate before and after from WordStream.


Damn.


So Larry Kim called this the smoking gun.


This is the smoking gun.


Here's the problem.


He's saying it's clear based on this data, right?


But this is one data point.


So what Larry has proven, effectively,


is that it is true that the removal of those profile


pictures affected at least one.


But did they broadly affect everyone?


Or is this an outlier?


Did this particular cert maybe have nothing to do with that?


And so I went to our team and I said, hey, guys,


can we do this?


Can we find an example of a bunch of search results


that have author profiles that had the picture removed,


where we're bidding and look at our click-through rates


and see what happened in the two weeks before and after?


Here's the data.


Minus 5 plus 19 plus 8 minus 1 minus 13 plus 23.


Ew.


You know what that is?


Not massively different from any comparison of any given two


week period.


I will say this.


There were two results on which we were the only bidder


or one of only two bidders.


Those were Moz rank and, I think, backlinks.


Like, we were one of only a few bidders for a certain period.


And those did move a little more.


I think we need a larger sample set.


This is just not good enough data.


To me, this is not a smoking gun.


And I now feel a little bad.


I feel a little regretful for saying


this is the most compelling explanation.


So I don't know.


Google, yeah, maybe they're doing some evil stuff.


But this might not have been one of those things.


All right.


Photo tweet storms.


OK, so tweet storms have been big news


in social media in the Twitter sphere,


particularly because a few high profile tweeters have


been using Twitter storms, which is essentially


replying to yourself and or sending out


a bunch of tweets in a successive row.


And photo tweet storms, according to a few articles,


are the most effective ones.


They've gained people like P. Markandrisen,


like a ton of new followers.


OK, all right.


So I want to test it out.


So I sent a tweet storm a couple months ago.


For no particular reason, here are some favorite photos


from 2014 so far.


These are my grandparents.


They are lovely.


They live in New Jersey.


And what is it about scotch that's so delicious?


Don't know.


The love of my life at the Munich Airport.


OK.


I like this.


This is the kind of stuff you would share on Facebook


normally.


I'd give it a try.


What do you think is going to happen?


Ew.


Oh, crap.


That is the most followers I've ever lost in a day.


Right?


I'm looking back at Wonk and all my data.


And analytics.Twitter confirms this as well.


Yikes.


But interesting.


So I tweeted about this.


Simon Swan says, interesting study.


If it had been 20 photos about SEO and digital marketing,


would this still have been the case?


Ooh, Simon.


Good question.


Let's do it.


Next weekend, might have been two weekends later,


10 pictures of my current favorite most used web


marketing tools.


Marketers love tools.


Oh, man.


Come on.


This has got to work, right?


Well, here we go.


BuzzSumo, an amazing tool for discovering


what content is working, who's sharing it, and where.


This is such a good tool that Will Reynolds and I tweeted


at the founders and said, hey, we


want to see the intersect of what content any two


people on Twitter have shared.


And they built the feature in 24 hours for us.


Come on, man.


It's just unreasonable.


All right, all right.


So let's see.


Here's one for keywordtool.io, which essentially has replaced


Ubersuggest as my favorite search suggest tool.


It's just so damn good.


Followerwonk has this cool sorting feature.


I sent out a bunch of tweets like this, 10 of them.


Well, I lost some followers, but I don't know.


How did it compare?


Actually, it was more followers lost and fewer gained


than a Sunday when I don't tweet at all.


Now, f that.


All right, I'm out.


I don't think the tweet storm thing is for me.


You should test it for you, but I don't like it.


Internal links.


I heard some chatter.


This presentation is really inspired


by one of my favorite things about the SEO world.


We go to bars after conferences, and you're


talking with your buddy, and he's like, hey, man,


I have been testing it out, and I think internal links


are working again.


We optimized some internal links,


and we saw big boosts in ranking.


I'm like, oh, really?


Did you?


Dude, I got to try that.


I got to test that out.


Come on, Rand.


Social media for CEOs.


I should be nailing this one.


Granted, I'm not a CEO anymore, but I


feel like I did a reasonable job balancing


CEOship and social media when I used to do that.


So can I go to 15 of the most relevant pages on Moz,


point some links at it?


Nope.


Nothing.


I ran this test once more, and the results were imperfect.


The test got messed with because some external people linked to


it, so I'm running it a third time now.


But what I found and what Bill Seibold found


when he ran a very similar test is inconsistent minor movement.


I don't think this is a powerful thing.


It's my theory, my guess.


Anchor text.


This one is fascinating.


All right, look at this.


A few years back, I started using this phrase in my bio,


my personal bio.


By the way, oh my god, bio anchor text and bio links


are the most powerful things.


Like, seriously, people.


You guys are not using these to the ability that you can.


If you can get your CEO, speakers in your company,


VPs in your company, or your client's company


to just put links in their bios, they


get picked up everywhere.


Every time the press writes about them,


every time they speak at a conference or event,


what do you think happens?


People copy them in.


They get interviewed.


Copy them in.


They copy and paste these bio pages word for word.


That phrase, serendipitous travel blog,


has appeared almost exclusively because I put it in my bio


all over the web, hundreds of places.


Oh, what do I see here?


That is very interesting.


That's not personalized.


Ubersuggest, keywordtool.io, they see it too.


Everybody sees it.


Search suggests being influenced.


Nobody is searching for this.


Nobody is searching for serendipitous travel blog.


Anchor text is.


I looked at other non-anchor phrases


that appear in my bio that are very unique.


No search suggests for them.


No search suggests for anyone.


In fact, I looked at every single MozCon speaker's bio


trying to find someone with anchor text that


was very unique.


None of you have unique anchor text.


But it's all right.


I forgive you.


I actually looked at all the SearchLove speakers as well.


None of them have it.


Whatever.


You guys, just anchor text.


Let's go.


Doesn't appear.


Doesn't work.


So if those don't, what could I find?


I looked at some research papers.


Research papers are cited by other papers


and by other links and the directories that


list research articles.


And they're always with exactly the same title.


And guess what?


When those anchors appear time after time after time,


you could find them in search suggest.


Baby, I'm kind of sold on this one.


Like I said, be skeptical.


Test yourself.


But I think anchor text is a strong signal,


a strong signal, and potentially even an individual input,


direct input, into search suggest.


Please heed the words potential.


Please heed the words test yourself.


I do not want to see just the trolling blog posts after this


that are like, oh, you should have put in more caveats.


I'm putting in an infinite number of caveats right now.


Cool.


No more caveats necessary.


Let's do some more rigorous controlled experiments, all


right?


Shall we?


Oh my god, I'm so excited to share this stuff with you guys.


All right.


Woo.


Do they?


What do you think?


Supposedly, Google's not that great at crawling Twitter,


Eric Engen and Mark Trappengen and those guys over at Stone


Temple did that great study looking at Twitter indexation


rates.


Not very good, right?


Even for very high authority figures,


they're not getting 30%, 40% of tweets indexed consistently.


Are they crawling without indexing?


Maybe.


So for this test, I ran I think seven total experiments


using nonsense words with few results,


like the kind of tail stuff.


And I just made pages on my personal site,


or I used somebody else's site as well who I have access to.


And she might not know that I have access to her site.


She probably does now.


So well, she stays logged in on Firefox, so I can just,


you know, anyway.


So you know, and then I tweet stuff.


I didn't tweet all of them from my account, by the way, FYI.


I got some people to test for me.


I have this nice test group who's helping me out.


Others of these were shared on Google Plus.


And the results, well, see for yourself.


12 hours, 10 hours, 11 hours.


OK.


That's not bad for indexation.


These didn't get a lot of retweets or anything,


or reshares, or plus ones.


Like very little, minor engagement, some engagement,


but not none.


Shared on Twitter, 12 hours, 11 hours.


Ran two Twitter tests.


XML sitemap only.


Each time it took three days.


Between three and four on the last one.


I wasn't paying perfect attention


at the end of that third day.


Hmm.


I mean, I want a bigger sample set.


I want to run this some more, but there's


something about social media.


I don't know what it is.


This could be related to scrapers.


This could be related to other sites picking it up.


This could be related to Google crawling, but not indexing.


Could be a lot of things, but man, social


looks a consistently faster methodology.


This is one of those ones where the actionable takeaway


is like, what kind of crazy person


produces something they want indexed quickly


and doesn't share it on social media?


Why would you ever do that anyway?


All right.


Although I do think it speaks to the fact


that Google might be crawling social more than they're


indexing social for discovery.


What about Google Plus shares or Plus ones impacting


non-personalized search?


Another caveat.


My experiment for this was very lightweight.


Thankfully, again, credit to Stone Temple.


They ran a great one.


I'll show you both of them.


So here's what we did.


We want to test this page over here.


We want to see if we can move it at all.


This page for tardigrades.


These crazy underwater bears that can live in space.


Microbial bears.


You can't see them.


They're super tiny.


They're featured on Cosmos by my hero Neil deGrasse Tyson.


10.50 AM.


Test URL ranks number 26 in non-personalized, logged out,


non-Geo biased Google US results.


That's what I use for all this stuff.


Non-personalized, non-Geo biased Google US results.


All right.


42 minutes later, we got a bunch of shares, a bunch of Plus ones.


And it looked like it kind of moved up a little bit.


Maybe that was.


I don't know what that could have been.


That could have been a lot of things.


Could have been natural normal movement.


Could have been the shares.


Could have been the engagement.


A lot of people are visiting this page that normally


would not visit this page.


48 hours later, after hundreds of shares, 95 Plus ones,


tons of additional posts, falls back down,


bounce around a little.


It didn't work.


Basically, nothing happened.


But a lot of people's Google Plus profiles


and logged in search results showed that my tardigrade


piece, the one that we promoted, right up top.


There's like 400 people on Google


who are connected to me or other people on Google Plus, who


if they search for tardigrade, they're


going to see that result because of this.


Stone Temple, they did a huge in-depth analysis,


tons of research.


You can read their paper on it there.


Take away, activity on Google Plus


is not directly driving rankings' influence


in non-personalized results.


But if you were listening to what Mark Trappagan had to say


yesterday, right, the first of our community speakers,


I mean, someone came up to me at the party last night


and said, Rand, should I just get all the people in my world


who might be searching for my product or my service


to follow me on Google Plus?


Because then everything I share is going to rank them.


I don't have to do SEO at all.


I just have to share my content on Google Plus.


I was like, man, that might be the world.


That might be the world.


But the counterpoint to that is that because Google Plus is


so inconsistent, meaning Google changes the real names policy.


They take away the authorship benefits.


Like, because they're so inconsistent with how it goes,


I don't feel like I can rely enough on Google Plus long term


to give me those personalized benefits.


I don't know what they're going to change next week.


So I can't really invest in that platform the way


that I invested in Facebook and Twitter


because I know that they have their primary, that's


their primary asset, right?


That's what they want long term.


So it's tough.


That's tough.


All right, so this is one of those bar conversations.


We're hanging out.


This is after a conference early this year


with a friend of mine, a friend of mine who's actually here


today, but whom I will not call out because I don't


have his permission to do so.


And he's like, dude, I think AnchorText is on its way out.


I don't think it is influencing the rankings the way


it used to.


And I'm like, dude, oh, are you serious?


Because we haven't seen the correlations fall.


But you know what?


We can test this.


These are the test conditions that we used.


So we basically take some three word informational keyword


phrases, select two results, point links


from the same 20 pages to both results,


one with matching AnchorText, one without.


I'll show you what I mean.


There you go.


See ranking number 13, 20 links from 20 domains.


This result with the AnchorText exactly matching.


B, same thing, non-AnchorText matching.


20 days, all links are indexed.


A moves up four positions.


B moves up four positions.


Nothing else moves up.


So we're like, OK, well, the competitiveness gap between 13


and 9 is higher than the competitiveness gap between,


what was it, 20 and 16.


But we've got to repeat this experiment.


So we repeat it.


20 links, 20 domains at 14.


Notice we flipped the order this time, by the way,


pointing the AnchorText at number 20.


Hold with me.


Boom.


16 days later, all the links have been indexed by Google.


A moved up 19 positions to number 1.


This is not a highly competitive keyword phrase,


but it's mildly competitive.


I would not have predicted that 20 links could have put it


in the number 1 position as soon as all those links got indexed.


And then B is moving up five positions to number 9.


All right.


So non-AnchorText is working, but AnchorText is really strong.


Got to do it again.


Same story.


A, B, 11 and 31.


This time I'm like, you know what?


Let's go to the tail.


Way back, page 4.


AnchorText links pointed here.


Non-AnchorText links pointed there.


Eight days later, not quite all links had been indexed,


and already AnchorText guy A is number 1.


Damn.


AnchorText works like a charm.


No wonder those black hats are still using it.


Shoot.


Links with exact match anchors.


We repeated this test one more time, by the way,


but I didn't put it in here.


Links with exact match AnchorText,


considerably more powerful than non-AnchorText match links.


This is my opinion.


This is what the data from these four experiments


is suggesting to me strongly.


AnchorText, external AnchorText, still very powerful,


still moves the needle quite a bit.


It feels a little old school SEO,


but I mean, that's the way it is.


Nofollow.


What do you think?


What do you think would happen?


Let's say there's a page that's ranking number 10 for a given


phrase, and you point a bunch of nofollowed links at it.


But like good nofollowed links.


Not like crappy comment spam nofollowed links,


like solid nofollowed links.


On a quality page, you put a link in there,


it just happens to be nofollowed.


Do you think that page is going to rise in the rankings?


My understanding is Google is telling us, no, we ignore that.


It will do nothing.


OK.


We can test that.


In fact, I want a huge call out to the IMEC Lab testing group.


It's a private group of folks who've


agreed to test with no benefit to themselves.


Incredibly selfless marketers who've dedicated,


almost 200 of them who've dedicated their sites


or their social accounts or whatever,


to helping me run these kinds of experiments.


I love you guys.


I know some of you are in the room.


I really appreciate it.


It means the world.


And it means even more to me because you require no credit.


You're just doing this out of wanting to help our industry


learn more about how Google works.


You rock.


Here we go.


Put the nofollow links from pages on 55 unique domains


at the page ranking number 16.


All nofollowed.


I confirmed them myself.


I had to visit every page and check them.


I had to email some people and be like, yo, dog,


your link is broken.


Indexation of all the links.


Page only moved up a single result.


Nothing else moved.


So that's mildly interesting.


But I don't know.


This was a pretty competitive result, to be fair.


In fact, I would say it's not a strongly search for term,


but it's two common words and a common phrase.


Very powerful domains ranking on page one.


So I'm like, ah.


All right.


So we asked participants to remove the nofollows.


Boom.


Page moves up to number six.


OK.


Maybe the nofollows did nothing and the real links


did something.


Good to know that the real links can do something,


because we're going to test it again.


Point nofollow links from pages on 42 unique domains


at the page ranking number nine.


Some people participate in some experiments.


Some people are out of town.


They don't have time.


So not everybody's participating in every experiment.


So there's guy ranking number nine.


This is for a slightly less competitive query.


Indexing all the nofollow links.


Page rises to number six and stays there.


Well, that's weird.


Nothing else moved.


Nothing else happened with that page.


This is a quiet back corner of the web.


There's no freshness stuff going on.


These are all nofollow links.


That's kind of weirding me out, man.


So we had everybody remove the nofollows again,


and the page rose to number five only.


But wait.


That's too weird.


It's too weird.


We've got to run this one a couple more times still.


But man, I feel like nofollows might do something.


Is that crazy?


Nofollows might do something on their own.


Whoa.


OK.


This one blew my mind.


Blew my mind.


So we'd run a bunch of link-based experiments,


some of which worked, some of which


didn't, some of which proved interesting,


some of which not so interesting.


But check this out.


This side effect was present in every single experiment we ran.


Months after the links had been removed,


the pages continued to rank highly, in some cases


as highly as they did when we pointed


at all the links at them.


What the hell is that?


What?


This is consistent.


Every single link test we ran where we pointed links


and then we removed or changed those links


and they no longer existed, the pages continued to rank.


There's one test that we ran four months ago.


The guy we pointed to who was ranking on page 30


is still number one.


Sorry, page four result 30 or 31.


Still number one four months later


after we removed all the links.


That is crazy.


Or is it?


This is Martin Panadiatov.


And Martin, years ago on the Moz blog, do you see that?


That's three years ago, says, yo, link ghosts are real.


I have seen it work time and again.


And there's my king.


Your link ghosts are the very same idea


I've been trying to sell SEOs for the past two weeks.


You guys are way ahead of the game.


Way to go, man.


That is very impressive.


And this one holds true so consistently


that I think it's a real phenomenon.


I think Google is saying essentially,


when a link disappears, don't take away its ranking effect


immediately.


This is a strong case to be made for, gosh,


what is the potential impact of link reclamation?


What does it mean to get a bunch of links


that I know are temporal and are going to go away?


Fascinating takeaways potential.


Mwah.


Well, glavin'.


All right.


You guys remember this test?


I sent this tweet a couple months ago now,


right, 30th of April.


So this page had been indexed and ranking poorly


for nine days.


Nine days.


And I heard someone say, hey, do you


know if you search for something,


if enough people search for something


and click on a result, it will bump up the rankings?


This is like an old school black hat tactic back in the day.


People used to use Amazon Mechanical Turk for this.


Remember that?


Well.


6.03 PM for the query iMacLab.


My blog post ranks number seven.


Three hours after the tweet is sent.


And 228 clicks later, oh.


Oh, I'm sorry, what is that?


Is that a number one ranking?


Why, thank you, yes, I would like


to outrank Janssen Pharmaceutical and the iMacLab


in Belgium, the iMacLab in South Africa, the Wikipedia


page for iMac.


Sure, just I'll take it all.


I like it.


Beautiful.


Well, OK, maybe something else could be going on, right?


Could something else be going on in here?


It's possible.


Maybe this is a total fluke.


Maybe it was going to rise in those three hours anyway.


I don't think that's very likely, but I share it.


And we need to repeat the experiment.


I not only shared it on Twitter, by the way,


I wrote a blog post about it.


I wrote a blog post called Could Queries and Clicks Influence


Rankings?


Bunch of people commented, by the way, and to a man and woman,


I did not hear a, no, this didn't work.


I heard, yeah, we've seen something like this too.


All right.


So I got to repeat it.


I might have done something dumb, though.


Publishing a blog post on an experiment that you're running,


it's sort of like telling the students in your lab group


that you might be messing with them.


So we ran six unique click and query tests


of a variety of natures.


Competitive results, not so competitive results.


Fresher results, not so fresh results.


Queries with little no click volume, some with some.


And man, this was frustrating for me.


We did a private test through the iMEC lab group,


164 clicks, moved up one position.


Private tests, got 140, moved up one position.


Private tests, 148 clicks, one position.


Public tests, 581 clicks.


That's a lot of engagement.


One position.


Public tests, 434 clicks.


And then we did a test around a disambiguation query


that was private.


Down one position.


It's frustrating.


I mean, the emotional part of me wants to be like,


well, maybe those plus ones, that could be related.


We looked at a bunch of stuff that was raining on page one.


Maybe they were just more competitive than the iMEC lab


one, but this was kind of eating at me.


I almost had this sense.


I don't actually believe this because I'm not


a conspiracy theorist.


But again, the emotional part of me is like, effing Google.


They're like watching my ass now.


Or they turn down the knob, right?


It just didn't feel right.


It felt like that first result was just so quick and obvious


and something changed and didn't work anymore.


I actually had this nervousness that like, OK,


maybe I publish a blog post.


And then if I'm Google, someone from Google reads it,


and they're like, dude, 200 clicks


can change a ranking to number one?


We've got to turn down that knob, boys.


Like, that ain't right.


And I empathize with that.


Maybe that happened.


Maybe it didn't.


I don't know.


I'm not going to conspiracy theory speculate.


What I am going to do is listen to Neil,


who's going to tell me, brother, you've


got to try it one more time.


One more time.


So this weekend, I'm like, all right, Matt cuts on vacation.


Wait, wait, wait, that's it.


Not only that, it was during the World Cup final.


And Googlers are like obsessed with the World Cup.


So I'm like, oh, yeah.


If anyone's messing with me, now's the time.


Here we go.


The buzzy pain distraction.


It's like a pain distraction thing


you stick on kids' arms at pediatric offices.


And it's sort of cool, and it buzzes.


It makes shots hurt less, and they're less scary.


Maybe.


Turns out, if you search for it, the top nine results


all come from their website, or websites they own and control.


Which I was like, ah, man, doesn't feel right.


And then the sciencebasedmedicine.org,


who's run by an amazing blogger, who


is a scientist who writes about this stuff,


did a bunch of analysis.


And she's sort of like, well, it's not dangerous.


It might distract kids from the pain.


But there's not a ton of clinical evidence saying


this is the best thing in the world.


OK.


This is eight days after publication.


Very similar to the IMEC lab test, right?


So this is eight days after that blog post had been published.


It's ranking number 10 for the query.


What should you do during that lull in the World Cup match?


Help me run a test.


Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, bum.


Oh.


I like to see that.


Look at that.


Number 10 to number 5, 315 clicks and two hours later


behaved almost exactly like that first experiment.


30 minutes and 60 more clicks later, number one.


All right.


You want to know the freakiest part?


The freakiest part is I unfortunately


didn't take screenshots.


This was not the only query for which that page started


ranking higher.


Let that settle in for a second.


This felt, when I looked at the other search results,


that this had moved up for, this felt


like I had pointed links at it.


I say felt like because this is not science.


Caveats, all the thousands of caveats.


I was pretty excited, though.


Oh, man.


I was like Geraldine got me that Sullivan's Cove,


that Tasmanian whiskey that won the World's Best Whiskey Award.


Oh my god, I just celebrated.


I was like, yes.


Screw you, Google.


All right.


They probably weren't actually watching.


Maybe I just triggered something.


Maybe they were.


I don't know.


The takeaway for me from all of this


is we should run more of these kinds of experiments.


I'd be fascinated to know what you guys have seen.


But I do believe there is probably circumstances,


at least, and possibly broad circumstances under which


queries and clicks might affect rankings.


And this should tie nicely into everything


you heard here at MozCon about connecting brand and television


and offline to online and all kinds of marketing to your SEO.


Because if you're not, and if you're not


producing incredible search user experience,


you will not get those clicks.


Somebody else will.


And if clicks are starting to feel like links,


I pity the fool that don't get clicks.


So I want to run more of these.


I love this.


I think this stuff is fascinating.


I think we can learn so much.


This is just the tip of the iceberg.


And I've only had a few months to start doing this


since I stepped down as CEO.


And obviously, I have a tremendous number


of other responsibilities at Moz.


But I want to test things like, what about surrounding text,


text surrounding the anchor text?


Does that influence stuff?


I have heard rumors.


I want to try it.


I think the words near that link are being used and interpreted


by Google in a way similar to, possibly not as powerful as,


but similar to anchor text.


And that can mean big things for those of us


who want to be very careful about our exact match anchor


text.


I think we can influence Search Suggest with the right number


of search volume.


You see this around popular events all the time.


I'm not sure that it's just anchor text.


I don't think it is.


I want to find out how much, how many,


what kind of distribution, whether Google has some things


that they're looking into, because I have seen this work.


What about on-topic links?


For years, SEOs have talked about on-topic versus


off-topic.


I have a hypothesis that it doesn't matter.


I want to verify and validate that.


I want to point links from on-topic sites to pages,


and I want to point them from off-topic,


and I want to see what happens.


What about getting a few high authority


links versus lots of low authority links?


I want to compare that.


What about Facebook?


Facebook has talked about the fact


that their reach for any given message


is connected to how well you do in the first few minutes, right?


That kind of figures into the algorithm


for whether you're going to be seen


by a lot of people on Facebook.


Let's try it, baby.


Let's try it.


I want you to join me.


Join this quest by visiting bit.ly slash iMacLab.


And if you have the time and energy, if you don't,


don't worry about it.


But if you have the time and energy,


and you have a website where you'd


be willing to throw up a link every few weeks,


or you'd be willing to send a tweet,


or you'd be willing to click on a result when I send you


an email, please join me in this test.


I think we can learn fascinating things together and do


Google's job, what they claim is their core value,


and make them more transparent on their behalf.


Because we're friendly people.


We're going to help them.


Thank you so much.


You want to take some questions?


What's some advice you can give them?


One thing I think is really important.


So Matt Brown and I were having a conversation at the bar


a few nights ago.


And Matt was like, hey, when it comes to very competitive


search results, things in financial industries,


in pharmaceutical industries, and these kinds of things,


I think Matt was saying he believes


that there are special algorithmic filters, tweaks,


additions that are not present in the global universal base


of how Google ranks whatever long tail query you might run.


And so Matt was like, I'm not sure that all the inputs that


you might observe in these kinds of tests


would translate there.


That is one big caveat.


If you're going to run a test, make


sure you're intentional about where


and how you're running it.


Intentional about the kinds of search results


you're looking at.


Do you care about the long tail and the broad,


unbiased algorithm?


Or do you care about the algorithm


that affects legal websites in local results?


Those could be two very different things.


Or they could be very similar.


We don't know yet.


We want to find that out too.


So that's one piece of advice.


Is that Darren?


Darren Shaw, Whitespark.


Oh, and record your methodology.


Yes.


Record your methodology.


I was pretty impressed that in 30 minutes after those clicks,


the rankings went up.


And it made me think there's 4,200 people in this room


right now.


Did it make you think that?


And I thought, if everyone typed in something.


Wait, I've tried this before.


It can really mess with stuff.


So you can't do it all on the same IP.


But if you all want to pull out your mobile,


we can try something together.


That's what I was thinking.


What do you guys think?


You want to try something?


All right.


All right, all right, all right.


Hang on.


I have one queued up.


He's got it.


What a coincidence.


No, no.


All right, this is very important.


Do not use the Wi-Fi.


We'll get kicked off right away.


It will crash.


Use your mobile.


And that's how we're going to do this.


Yeah, yeah.


OK, so we are going to be searching for,


on your mobile device, please, Seattle wedding dresses.


And I would appreciate it if you did not tweet or share


this test publicly, at least for a few hours,


so that we can see whether the results are


similar to what we saw.


And then at the bottom of the page,


ranking at the bottom of the page,


you will see a result from, which one?


Oh, beltownbride.com.


Seattle wedding dresses.


Bottom of the page.


Click on.


We'll see a result for beltownbride.com.


Do you guys see that?


Yes?


Awesome.


Let's give that a little click.


OK.


And let's see what happens tonight.


All right.


Why that's cooking?


Was that the end of your question, Darren?


That was it.


All right, awesome.


I thought we should try something.


Yes.


This man who doesn't bring.


Oh, sorry.


Wait, to be clear, yes, thank you, Mike.


Mike Ramsey pointed out, don't click the local result.


We're looking at the one at the bottom of the page


in the organic results.


Oh.


Sorry about that.


Not working.


We are working.


Hi, so same test.


Did you notice how long was there any drop off,


any decay in the rankings, and over what period?


Yes, I did notice a decay.


The iMacLab result fell after about three days.


The new one fell back from number one


back down to number five, where it remains today,


so four days later.


Yes, so we did see rise and decay.


But the interesting part is that rise and decay was present


on other queries as well related to that page.


So it almost feels like a freshness boost from a link


and then a decay.


If I didn't know better, right, if I


were thinking from a how does Google do this standpoint,


I'd be like, hey, let's use the same architecture


infrastructure that we use for measuring and counting links.


And let's just treat this like it's


received an extra bit of link equity


for a temporary period in a similar manner.


And that could be connected to quantity of people,


might be similar diversity results.


I am wholly guessing on this, but that's how I would do it,


because it would save me a bunch of infrastructure


and extra algorithmic design.


So that could be what's going on.


Hey, how's it going, John?


Good doing.


Good to see you, man.


So thanks for this for the beginning.


I've loved tests.


I've been an SEO as long as you have, as you know,


and it's all part of the game.


And my big thing, and because I've never really,


honestly, get an answer from this, from the industry,


it ends up actually becoming something that makes everybody


very defensive.


And that's not what I'm trying to do here.


It's more about let's challenge ourselves to try and do this.


But based on everything we've seen about over just


those three days, we're about A-B testing


and statistical significance and just a bunch of other things.


And the fact that this index is so massively huge in that sense


and the tests that we seem to do for SEO tests every time we


do that are always like one or two.


Absolutely.


One on top of it.


So what I really want to ask you about really what maybe I want


to challenge the industry is, are we truly


testing this enough?


Are we really giving ourselves a bed enough of it,


or are we creating more problems by the fact


that we're saying, hey, look, I noticed this.


It's an interest.


And then have everybody follow that that


just causes more problems.


Yeah, I think this is a fascinating thing.


And it's all about the psychology of marketers


and how we treat information.


So if you see something like this and you go,


I'm going back to my office to build nofollow links,


that should not be the message.


What the message should be is, gosh, this link


is valuable from a non-SEO perspective.


It happens to be nofollowed.


Man, this is a great time to see if what


Rand saw in his experiments is similar to what


I'm going to see.


And then you should try that out.


And if that works for you, fantastic.


What I also really want from these experiments


is I want amplification.


I am seeking to amplify the number of tests


people are running.


I want to see someone who goes, I'm calling bullshit


on that, Rand.


And I want to see them run the test 10 times, 20 times,


and show me that our initial results were wrong.


I only have the bandwidth to do four or five tests repeated


again and again.


And I think it's a pattern when I see the same thing,


right, the link goes thing.


I mean, we're talking more than a dozen tests


where we move the links and the rankings stay.


Gosh, that's a coincidence.


But I really would love for people to go,


yes, I can replicate the click through.


Yes, I can replicate the nofollow.


Yes, I can try tweet storms.


Yes, I can try Facebook amplification.


I think you've hit on a wonderful goal that


should come out of the work that I'm trying


to do at a very small level.


So based on that, maybe the first step in this process,


because I'd love it to be the process,


and there's a lot of smart people in here,


is that we actually do define that.


Given that your company actually has kind of figured out


like just the number of pages that are actually


indexed on the web or wherever, that when we set these things,


instead of just saying, hey, look, I'm going to do this,


and this is a hypothesis or whatever,


and that at some point we say, OK, I've tried it five times.


Now we have to try it 10,000 more times in order


just to be legitimate, right?


And just so that we're all up front with the idea that, hey,


look, we just honestly haven't tried this enough to really


truly publish in a scientific manner.


And I know you're not the scientist,


but that's where I'm coming from.


I would absolutely welcome that.


I think that would be wonderful.


Great.


Thank you.


Somebody do the math, please.


Yeah, we're going to take a couple more.


We know some of you have to go to the airport,


and we're a little over time.


So we're going to do at least two or three more,


and then we'll call it.


Go.


Hey, Ryan.


So you said your experiment shows your anchor text


influences auto-suggest.


So if you think about it, are you


saying that if a keyword starts to show up in auto-suggest,


you could get search volume?


No, no, no, no, no.


Well, could it eventually lead to search volume?


Well, if it starts showing up.


Let me disconnect those two things.


If something appears frequently in anchor text,


my guess is that Google has seen that anchor text often


correlates with search volume.


Hence, they say, hey, from a search suggest perspective,


let's start treating anchor text as a potential signal


into search suggest.


This is me theorizing again, please.


So theorizing that let's start putting that


And if many people then search for it,


then let's keep it in there.


But in this case, it doesn't look


like they've done the last step, where they're kicking it out


if nobody searches for it.


It looks like anchor text on its own, even without search


volume.


All the research paper results that I could find, it showed up.


You start typing something like thermodynamics in,


and it'll be like thermodynamics in the multivariate industry


of conceptual bifurcation.


What?


Nobody searched for that.


Oh, it's the name of a paper that


has been in anchor text a lot.


And then papers that don't get linked to, they don't show up.


But then my point is, if you're typing something,


and you see that pop up, and you start searching for it, and.


Yes, that's a good point.


It could influence people to search for it.


Yes.


That's what I meant.


That's an excellent.


I mean, this is wonderful for people


who are thinking about reputation management.


And people are thinking about what


do they want people to associate with their brand,


and what keywords would lead someone to their website.


Right, there's a lot of possibilities.


OK, thanks.


OK.


Phillip, I know you've been waiting.


Oh, OK.


I love your experiments.


I think they're really interesting.


Oh, thanks.


I've done my own.


I know, I know.


I've seen pretty much the same thing.


I don't have a question for you.


I have a suggestion.


So when people actually click on the link that you tell them to,


tell them to do an A-B test.


So instead of just looking at that page,


just click on more pages on that site.


And then a different set should go back to the Google results


and click on a different link.


Yes, yes.


So we do have some, sorry, I'm getting reverb.


We do have some information suggesting that the long click


versus the pogo sticking.


I mean, Google themselves have told us they use pogo sticking.


Bing says they use pogo sticking.


To what degree is hard to know.


But they're public about that.


So I do think that would be a fascinating addition


to this test.


That's a great suggestion.


And if that influences ranking or not.


I mean, imagine if we could see that.


Imagine if we could see that pogo sticking, even


with just a few dozen or a few hundred visits,


could lower someone's rankings.


That's scary stuff, right?


And it speaks to a best practice we should have anyway,


which is search user experience.


Relevancy.


Yeah.


Thank you.


OK, this will have to be our last one right over here.


So on the subject of.


Wait, we can take one more.


I can answer both real fast.


I saw you look so disappointed.


Hey, going back to the ghost linking, or ghost links,


we're talking about positive links.


But what if you have negative links you get removed?


Will they continue to haunt you?


I mean, do I want to test that?


That is, OK, a lot of SEOs have felt that pain.


Whether we can attribute it directly to that


is another question.


But I don't know the answer to that.


We would have to test that.


That probably wouldn't be on my list,


because with a few exceptions, I am running a negative SEO test.


I've talked to folks publicly about this before, right?


That I'm in talks with two folks who own nice websites that


get a lot of search traffic, tens of thousands per month.


And I'm going to bomb the crap out of them


with the worst links on the internet and see what happens.


And they're very clean sites that have never done any SEO.


So I'm hoping to see.


Not yours, not yours.


I'm not doing yours.


So I do hope to find out the answer to that.


But I won't have the link ghosts on the negative side


unless we remove them without sending a reconsideration


request.


So that's a challenging one to test.


Be fascinating to know.


Sorry.


Thanks for taking my question.


Oh my gosh.


So I was just wondering, with these experiments


and the importance of user experience in search,


is there a control for that?


Particularly, bounce rates occurred to me for these.


Yeah, and that's exactly what Philip was talking about,


right?


Trying to test that pogo sticking thing where


some people click and have the long click.


They stay on the site.


They browse around.


And some people go right back to the search results


and click something else.


And what Google and Bing say is if people


are going back to the search results


and clicking something else, that's a signal to us


that they don't like your result.


They weren't satisfied by your result.


So that could certainly be an indication.


Testing that, challenging but not impossible.


And we would like to do that.


All right.


Brandon, I want you to stay on stage just a second.


But I want to say thank you for this wonderful presentation.


It's my pleasure.


Yeah.


I changed remind myself of this picture,


not this picture I outside.


What I want that to be is the motherire


How to Get Into Google News - Whiteboard Friday

Hi everyone, I'm Barry Adams. I'm a technical SEO consultant at Pulamic Digital and a specialist


in news SEO. Today we're going to be talking about how to get into Google News. I get a


lot of questions from a lot of people about Google News and specifically how you get a


website into Google News because it's a really great source of traffic for websites. Once


you're in the Google News index you can appear in the top stories carousel on Google search


results and that can send a lot of traffic your way. So how do you get into Google News?


How do you go about getting your website? Part of Google News is manual index so that


you can get that top stories traffic for yourself. Well, it's not always as easy as it makes


you appear. You have to jump through quite a few hoops before you get into Google News.


First of all, you have to have a dedicated news website. You have to keep in mind when


you apply to be included in Google News there's a team of Googlers who will manually review


your website to decide whether or not you're worthy of being in the news index. And that


is a manual process and your website has to be a dedicated news website. I get a lot of


questions from people asking if they have a news section or a blog on their site and


if that could be included in Google News. The answer tends to be no. Google doesn't


want news websites in there that aren't entirely about news, that are commercial websites that


have a news section. They don't really want that. They want dedicated news websites, websites


whose sole purpose is to provide news and content on specific topics and specific niches.


So that's the first hurdle and probably the most important one. If you can't clear that


hurdle you shouldn't even try getting into Google News. There's also a lot of other aspects


that go into Google News. You have to jump through, like I said, quite a few hoops. Some


technical requirements are very important to know as well. Google wants your articles


and your section pages to have static, unique URLs so that an article or section is always


on the same URL and Google can crawl it and re-crawl it on that URL without having to


work with any redirects or other things. If you have content with dynamically generated


URLs that does not tend to work with Google News very well. So you have to keep that in


mind and make sure that your content, both your articles and your static section pages,


are on fixed URLs that tend not to change over time. It also helps to have all your


content in plain HTML. Google News, when it indexes your content, it's all about speed.


It tries to index articles as fast as possible. So any content that requires client-side JavaScript


or other sort of scripting languages tends not to work for Google News. Google has a


two-stage indexing process where the first stage is based on the HTML source code and


the second stage is based on a complete render of the page including executing JavaScript.


For Google News, that doesn't work. If your content relies on JavaScript execution, it


will never be seen by Google News. Google News only uses the first stage of indexing


based purely on the HTML source code. So keep your JavaScript to a minimum and make sure


that the content of your articles is present in the HTML source code and does not require


any JavaScript to be seen to be present. It also helps to have clean code. By clean code


I mean that the article content in the HTML source code should be one continuous block


of code from the headline all the way to the end. That tends to result in the best and


most efficient indexing in Google News because I've seen many examples where websites put


things in the middle of the article code like related articles or video carousels, photo


galleries and that can really mess up how Google News indexes the content. So having


clean code and make sure the article code is in one continuous block of easily understood


HTML code tends to work the best for Google News. There's also quite a few other things


that are technically optional but I see them as pretty much mandatory because it really


helps with getting your content picked up in Google News very fast and also make sure


you get that top storage carousel position as fast as possible which is where you will


get most of your news traffic from. Primarily the news XML sitemap. Google says this is


optional but recommended and I agree with them on that. Having a news specific XML sitemap


that lists articles that you've published in the last 48 hours up to a maximum of a


thousand articles is absolutely necessary. For me I think this is Google News' primary


discovery mechanism when they crawl your website and try to find new articles. So that's the


news specific XML sitemap is absolutely crucial and you want to make sure you have that in


place before you submit your site to Google News. I also think it's very important to


mark up your articles with news article structured data. It can be just article structured data


or even more specific structured data segments that Google is introducing like news article


analysis and news article opinion for specific types of articles but article or news article


markup on your article pages is pretty much mandatory. I see your likelihood of getting


into the top storage carousel much improved if you have that markup implemented on your


article pages. Also like I said this is a manually curated index so there's a few extra


hoops that you want to jump through to make sure that when a Googler looks at your website


and reviews it, it ticks all the boxes and it appears like a trustworthy genuine news


website. Having multiple authors contribute to your website is hugely valuable, hugely


important and it does tend to elevate you above all the other blogs and small sites


that are out there and makes it a bit more likely that the Googler reviewing your site


will press that approve button. Having daily updates definitely is necessary. You don't


want just one news post every couple of days. Ideally multiple new articles every single


day that also should be unique. You can have some sort of syndicated content on there like


from feeds, from AP or Reuters or whatever but the majority of your content needs to


be your own unique content. You don't want to rely too much on syndicated articles to


fill your website with newest content. Try to write as much unique content as you possibly


can. There isn't really a clear ratio for that. Generally speaking I recommend my clients


to have at least 70% of the content as unique stuff that they write themselves and publish


themselves and only 30% maximum syndicated content from external sources. And it really


helps to have a specialized niche or specialized topic that you focus on as a news website.


There's plenty of news sites out there that are general news and try to do everything


and Google News doesn't really need many more of those. What Google is interested in is


niche websites on specific topics, specific areas that can provide in-depth reporting


on those specific industries or topics. So if you have a very niche topic or a niche


industry that you cover with your news it does tend to improve your chances of getting


into that news index and getting that top stories carousel traffic. So that in a nutshell


is how you get into Google News. It might appear to be quite simple but like I said


quite a few hoops for you to jump through, a few technical things you have to implement


on your website as well. But if you tick all those boxes you can get so much traffic from


the top stories carousel and the rest is profit. Thank you very much. This has been my Whiteboard


Daily SEO Fix: Find Important Keywords to Improve On with Keyword Gap

Hi there, I'm Rachel from the Onboarding team and I'm going to show you how you can find


the most important keywords to improve your rankings for.


When you target new keywords, it's important to know which of these keywords are most relevant


to your industry or niche.


To find this out using Moz Pro, head to the competitive research section and then select


keyword gap.


Enter your site in the first field.


You can choose to either enter your entire domain or a subdomain of your site.


Below this you can enter up to three competitor domains or subdomains.


Once you have them added, click on analyze competitors.


You'll be given a site overview which shows you the total number of keywords both your


site and your competitors are ranking for.


You can also see the top positions each site is in for those keywords, the page authority


of each site's homepage and the domain authority for each domain.


If you select ranking distribution, you can see the breakdown of each site's ranking positions.


To find out what keywords are most important to improve your rankings for, scroll down


to keywords to improve.


These suggestions are based on your competitors most prominent ranking keywords.


You can filter by keywords you also rank for or keywords that you don't rank for.


You can view the monthly search volume, the difficulty score, your ranking position and


a new metric called traffic lift which represents the expected gain in traffic if the chosen


domain overtakes the top identified competitors ranking position.


If you'd like to research keywords further, you can add them into a keyword list.


But if you wish to track them straight away, you can add them directly to your Moz Pro


campaign.


If you want to share this list with a colleague or a client, you can download it as a CSV.


And that's how you can easily identify the most important keywords to improve your rankings


for.


How to Find Your SEO Competitors — Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, MOS fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Fridays.


My name is Lydia Infante, and I'm the Senior SEO Manager at Sanity.io.


Today we're going to be talking about how to find your real SEO competitors.


Competitor identification and competitor research is absolutely key to a good SEO strategy.


In order to nail it, you need to figure out who your competitors really are.


How do we know that someone's a competitor on search?


Essentially, they need to meet three criteria.


They're targeting the same keywords as you, they're speaking to the same audience, and


they solve for the same consumer need as you.


That is, if your target audience goes with them, they have no more need for you.


There are essentially two approaches to identifying your competitors.


You've got a top-down approach, and you've got a bottom-up approach.


So let's begin with this one.


The very first thing you are going to do is contact other departments.


Depending on where you are and the type of vertical that you're working in, you're going


to want to talk to sales, you're going to want to talk to support, to customer success,


to other areas of marketing, and even engineering.


And ask them to provide a list of their perceived competitors.


The next thing you're going to do is check an audience research tool.


I recommend, for example, True Competitor by Maas, obviously.


And then you're going to want to find the overlap between the two lists.


So out of the list that your departments and your colleagues say that are your competitors,


and the list that your tool says those are your competitors, you're going to want to


find the overlap.


The advantages of this method is that it helps you get buy-in, because other departments


are going to recognize parts of their work into the output that you're going to present,


and build better connections with them.


And it's really fast.


You can get this done in a day, even less.


It depends on how long you're going to have to wait for that information from other departments.


There are other aspects of it that are not as good.


So for example, it's not going to be the most accurate competitor research that you've ever


had.


And you're not going to be able to drill into competitors by topic.


However, this is best for performing sites.


So if your site has been online for a while, and you're ranking for a few of your target


keywords, this is going to work really well for you.


And going for the bottom-up framework might be overkill.


But then if you're starting a new site, or if you really, really want to dig into who


your competitors are, you're going to want to do the bottom-up way.


So the very first thing that we're going to do is we're going to identify what your target


keywords are, and then we're going to cluster them into little topics.


For each of those keywords, we're going to download the SERP results, the top 10, the


first page.


And we're going to analyze the competitor presence for each of your topics.


So if, let's say, Amazon shows up in 100% of your keywords for X topic, you know that


this is very key for you.


And then what you can do is drill down even further and identify the SERP features that


are present in each topic.


You've already done the download.


You already have the data.


Just dig in a little deeper, and you'll find out if you are best to attack these results


with infographics, articles, video, any other format.


This is very accurate, but it can be really slow.


The bottom-up framework is really good if you're starting a new site or if you're not


sure that the approach that you've had before is working.


Since it's a little tricky, I have provided a free template that you can find linked in


the text below.


And you can find me on socials at Lydia Infante or my website, lydiainfante.com.


But before you go to point two, I was using Moz's True Competitor tool, and it blew my


mind.


I recently joined a new company, sanity.io, and I really wanted to figure out who my competitors


are.


I'm an expert in headless CMSs and the structure content space, so I've been working on it


for literal weeks.


Just now, I was hanging out with the Moz team.


They showed me the tool, and they immediately nailed my top five competitors on a click.


What is that?


Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + the State of the Industry

Hey everybody, welcome. We're about to get started. Today is the day. MozCon 2020. This


is a new experience for us. I'm coming to you live from the MozCon offices. I'm here


by myself. But we're so glad you're here. We're so glad that you chose to join us today.


We've been doing MozCon a long time. It is the granddaddy of SEO conferences. The Super


Bowl, the World Cup, all rolled into one. We have speakers, some of the best speakers


in the world lined up for you over the next two days, networking, all sorts of great events.


Our goal, since MozCon always has been one of the best SEO conferences out there, our


goal was to make MozCon 2020 virtual the best virtual conference of the year, hands down.


So we've got a lot in store. It's a jam packed day, you don't want to miss anything. So without


further ado, I'd like to welcome our opening keynote, our CEO, the fearless leader of Moz,


Sarah Bird. We're going to kick it over to Sarah. We'll see you in a bit.


Welcome to the very first MozCon virtual. It is my great honor to host you in this new


format and new events. And I want to thank you for coming along the ride with us and


trying something completely different. I'm stepping outside of my comfort zone. I appreciate


you spending your time here with us. At the time of filming, we have people from over


26 countries. So this truly is a very global audience. I want to give a special shout out


to those of you that are waking up super early or staying up super late to join us for this


live event. I also want to assure you that this is going to be time really well spent.


My hope, my aspiration is that you are going to leave MozCon virtual more engaged and more


inspired in your work. And I really believe that is going to happen. Our speakers have


been working so hard to create something really amazing for you. I also want to say that you


have made a great choice to invest in yourself and your skills, your career, and that will


also help your teammates around you. It's going to help the organization you work for.


It's going to further that organization's mission and help your organization's stakeholders.


It's really important to take time out to pause and reflect. I often notice that at


any given day, I feel up to my elbows and alligators with work to do. And if I don't


intentionally set time aside to slow down, to re-examine the context I am working within


and brush up my skills and get a change of perspective, I can just stay stuck for a long


time. So I'm so glad that you have chosen to do this with us. Let's continue. We've


made it this far. We are still going. SEO in 2020. I want to spend some time talking


about the five sort of hot trends for SEO in 2020. And before I do, I want to share


with you that one of the things I love about digital marketing is that it does change all


the time. I've been doing this for well over 10 years now. It changes all the time. And


yet it also stays very much the same. So as I go through these five topics, we'll talk


about how things are different and how things have stayed the same. The first hot topic


in SEO 2020 is welcoming our robot overlords. We are seeing the impact of artificial intelligence


and the opportunity in automation. Artificial intelligence has been impacting SEO for some


years. We've had RankBrain around for a very long time. And last October, Google announced


BERT. What is BERT? BERT is Google's neural network-based technique for natural language


processing. Google says that the BERT algorithm is its biggest leap forward in five years


and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of search. So it's a big deal. And


I'm sure you're going to hear a lot about it in the next two days. It affects one in


10 searches already. And Google uses BERT to get a better understanding of the better


context around the individual words within a search. Now it's very important to understand


that we cannot actually optimize for BERT just like we couldn't for RankBrain. And what


it really means is that marketers need to spend more time creating high quality, relevant


content that meets a searcher's intent than ever before. This is part of the overall trend


that you would hear us talk about in SEO away from keywords to topics and to entities. And


that brings me to my second hot topic, which I know we're going to hear a lot about in


the days ahead here. Let's talk about entities. Google says that entities are things or concepts


that are singular, unique, well-defined, and distinguishable. They don't have to be something


physical. They can be an idea. They can be a concept. But it does have to be singular


and unique, distinguishable, and well-defined. So Moz, for example, is an entity, but the


color blue is not. So some questions to ask yourself. Does Google understand the entities


on your site? Do you have control over an entity that maybe you could claim as a knowledge


panel? Knowledge panel. That brings me to my third hot topic in SEO 2020. What the heck


is a SERP anyway? SERP, search engine result page. In the olden days, it was 10 blue links.


It was all pretty clear. And nowadays we have knowledge panels, feature snippets, rich results,


rich snippets, GMB, carousels, updated image search, voice search, we have interactive


search and Google actions now. And in fact, a really fun game idea for your MozCon virtual


experience would be to take a shot every time one of the MozCon virtual speakers says schema


markup. Kidding, don't actually do that because you'll die unless of course you're taking


shots of kale juice, in which case you'll be very healthy and you should go for it.


In addition to all these different kinds of SERP formats, a sort of explosion of creativity


and different ways to meet user intent, everything has gone very local, which brings me to my


number four hot topic, localization of everything. Hyperlocal search, it's here, it's growing.


Where a searcher is located is one of the primary ranking factors that's going to determine


what shows up. That means there's more opportunities to rank, but for marketers, it also means


it's more complex to know how you're doing, how your search campaign is succeeding. I


think we have also become all of us more painfully aware of how important it is that search is


hyperlocal, given that in this new world impacted by COVID, the experience we're having, is


this shop open? Is this closed? What news is relevant is very hyperlocal. Man, the Google


My Business team, I hope that they get a vacation sometime on the other side of this because


they have been shipping new features like nobody's business. Get it? Nobody's business?


It's a good joke. It's a good joke. Okay, number five, the fifth thing I wanted to take


a moment to talk about in SEO trends for 2020 is these new and ramping up search experiences.


Google Discover is picking up a lot of steam here in June. Google just announced Keen,


which seems to be sort of a Pinterest-y like proactive search curation experience. I personally


believe that we are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg on visual search. I have


been saying that for a couple of years, but I still think it's true. Maybe in MozCon 2021,


when we're all back together again, we'll be talking more about these new and emerging


search experiences. Oh, and all of these hot topics, none of them really matter if you


don't have your technical SEO dialed in as a foundation. So we are going to spend some


time in the next two days talking about your technical SEO because you got to get that


right. If you're feeling a little overwhelmed right now, that's normal, right? I just gave


a whole list of things and changes and what's going on and don't worry about it. Your MozCon


virtual speakers are here to help. And while it is very good to keep abreast, important


to keep abreast of what's happening in your industry generally, at the end of the day,


of course, each of you needs to be looking at what is relevant for your particular industry,


for your particular brand and the go forward. And it's not as if anything else is going


on to distract you from your career and improving your skills. Am I right? Plenty of time to


focus on this. Okay. I know that is not the case. We are in a moment of historic, historic


disruption. I wonder actually what major disruptions are happening wherever you live. Here in Seattle


at the time of this recording, which again is late June, Lord knows what is going to


happen between now and when MozCon starts. We are experiencing the impact of the COVID-19


pandemic and also a national reckoning of centuries long racial injustice. And these


events are drastically altering our lives and our consciousness. Our awareness has really


been heightened as to how interconnected our lives are, how health, race, schools, global


supply chains, politics, and our justice system are all connected. We rise and we fall together.


So I don't know what is happening for each of you in your context, but I'm pretty sure


COVID is a gigantic part of it. Global catastrophes like COVID, they change the world and the


legacy of this pandemic is going to last years and perhaps decades. It is going to change


the way we move, we build, we learn, we connect. And I personally hope that this moment will


change how we define who is considered essential and how we take care of the most vulnerable


in our society. There is simply no way for our lives to resume as if none of this ever


happened. And that's actually okay. I have been really inspired by the writing of professor


Ayesha Amand at the University of Toronto and her work. She has studied crises and people


who've been through war and she has profound wisdom to offer all of us and surviving and


ultimately hopefully even thriving through crises. And she tells us that now more than


ever we really need to abandon the performative, embrace the authentic and that our essential


mind shifts are going to require humility and perseverance. I think that's a great attitude


to come into MozCon with, humility and perseverance. She reminds us that change starts with each


of us individually and that we're really experiencing and we're witnessing the super messy human


transformations all around us. These transformations are honest, raw, ugly, hopeful, frustrating,


beautiful, and in some moments even divine. I love how she invites us to loosen some things


up, some things that really do need to come undone. And with this historic disruption,


I really hope that we can tear down so many of our false assumptions and find the courage


to accept bold new ideas. And I wanted to talk about this calling, right? This notion


of being called because I think each of us is being called to meet the demands of our


new context. And I invite you to let this moment really impact you, right? For whatever


this is for you, both in your professional level, your personal level, our global community,


right? There are a lot of brutal facts. Let them sink in, let new awareness come to you.


Let it change how you think, how you see the world. Because as Professor Amand reminds


us, the world is our work. I want to say that again. The world is our work. This has always


been true, but I think we feel it more in times of crisis because we're already disrupted


and out of our routines and we're seeing the sort of cracks and the fissures that have


already been there experiencing new stresses. So in this time of crisis, when we are working


on the world, I want you to never doubt that we are going to get to the other side of this.


We're going to prevail and that each of these experiences we are going through are going


to become the defining events of our lives. That our character is being forged by these


moments. And someday, no matter how hard and terrible and challenging this time period


is, we were going to look back and we're not going to trade this time because it is going


to be the threshold that brought us to a new, better, more holistic understanding of who


we are and I believe a more just and healthy world.


So I said at the top of my welcoming to you that I want you to leave MozCon virtual feeling


more engaged, feeling more inspired. I want you to learn new skills. I want you to make


unusual friends or maybe even friends, but in unusual ways. I don't know. You know, there


are going to be projects that come out of this that you can't imagine right now. You


are going to inspire people you haven't even met yet and we're going to help each other.


Your speakers have put so much genius, energy, vulnerability, and love into their talks.


They're here to help you confront brutal facts about what is changing in our industry and


challenges and I encourage you to really sit with that. They're also here to remind you


and inspire you that you are going to prevail. We're all going to make it and I think these


moments are really when our professional community is at its best and the very best of you is


being called forth in this moment in history. On the other side of all of these shifts,


your wonderful, creative, brilliant, genius, resilient brain is waiting for you. Things


are going to feel more natural. The work is going to make more sense. You're going to


be more comfortable with changing or undoing things that are already in motion. New ideas


are going to emerge that has not yet occurred to you while you have been in some state of


denial or in recluse or in shelter. Please continue to embrace these mental shifts. Have


faith in the process. We're here to support each other and I want you guys to support


your families, your teams, your communities. This is a great remaking of everything and


we have the courage to do that. So no matter what happens next, together I know we're going


to prevail. We're going to create a better world and we can do that by leaning into these


conversations. So that is what I got for you on MozCon. I welcome you. I'm excited to turn


you over to your speakers. But before I do that, I have to change hats out of my CEO


self and into some housekeeping. So housekeeping, which is so important because while I cannot


tell you what the future is going to be like exactly, I can tell you what the next two


days are going to be like. Let's start with this very, very important concept, dear to


my heart. MozCon is for everyone. So we've all heard stories of harassment and bullying


and unpleasant things that happen at professional conferences. I've experienced some of them


myself. It's the pits. That is not going to happen here. That doesn't happen on our watch.


So there's no place for inappropriate behavior or bullying at MozCon. We have a code of conduct.


We will not hesitate to ban people who don't follow it with us. And if you feel unsafe


or you see something where someone else looks unsafe, please do private message the event


staff or any Mozer so we can handle it. Because as the Dalai Lama said, be kind whenever possible


and it is always possible. Partners, we cannot have a conference without partners. So all


of the virtual high fives to our amazing partners. We have 97th floor, base search marketing,


email rail, crowd content and pages SEO magazine. Thank you. Thank you sponsors for making this


all work. Another thing to call out, you know, MozCon virtual is just for you. Your credentials


cannot be shared, which by now you are probably realizing if you're wondering why you keep


getting kicked out, it's because we can only be signed in from one device at a time on


your credentials. So sorry. So sorry. Sarah, what about the Q and A? Yes, we have Q and


A. We have Q and A during the sessions. Go to the session pages. The speakers are there


to engage you in chat. It's going to be a lot of fun. Let's talk about networking. If


you're an introvert, you're so delighted with this new way of doing conferences. And if


you're an extrovert or someone who just they live for the networking piece, we're trying


something different. There is networking, you need to jump over to the MozCon lounge


where you can engage in group discussions, have important announcements and generally


get to know your fellow attendees. So that's the MozCon lounge area. Recordings for all.


You get a recording, you get a recording and you get a recording. My Oprah moment. I've


always wanted one. You are going to get these recordings to take home with you to rewatch


all your favorites. Or if you're like me and you're sort of like parenting while you're


also trying to do your job, you can chunk this up over time and watch sessions before


your kids are up and after they've gone to bed because that's how that works. Also feedback


is a gift and we're going to ask you for feedback at the end of every speaker's session. We


share that feedback with them. They love it. They rely on it. We love the feedback. We


do use it. We change things every year. We're always experimenting. Please, please, pretty


please give us your feedback. Feedback, the good, the badly ugly. Social, use MozCon,


hashtag MozCon. You don't need to put a virtual at the end of it. That's just a waste of characters


and nobody's got time for that. So hashtag MozCon, use it. You can't abuse it. Well,


you probably could, but I don't think you will. Presenter slides and resources. We've


got two places you can get those. You can download them from the session page, the particular


session page, or you can go to the Moz.com website to our posted agenda and you will


find links to the materials there. So get it, use it, enjoy it. If you are enjoying


the music, we have curated a special playlist for you and it is available on Spotify. So


go there and take a look for all your own MozCon jams.


Last and the opposite of least, they're extraordinary MCs. Two of my favorite people, Brittany Mueller,


Cyrus Shepard, longtime friends, a great inspiration to me, a great support for all of you. They


are going to be guiding you through MozCon and introducing each individual speaker. We


are so lucky to have them. Thank you. Thank you to our amazing MCs. And that is it. We


are ready to do this. We're ready to rock and roll the very first MozCon virtual. I'm


Sarah Bird. It's been my pleasure to welcome you. I hope you have an inspiring and engaging


Programming for SEOs - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy Moz fans, Paul Shapiro here, head of SEO at Catalyst.


I'm here to talk to you today about programming for SEOs and marketers.


Why should you learn how to program?


I think there's really several key benefits to learning how to program.


First being developer relations.


As SEOs, we're constantly working with developers to implement our recommendations.


And understanding why they make certain decisions, how they think, is really pivotal to working


with them better.


Technical SEO.


Understanding how to program makes you a better technical SEO.


Just understanding the construction of websites and how they operate really helps you do a


lot better with your SEO.


Automation, as marketers, as SEOs, we all sometimes do very repetitive tasks.


And being able to cut down on the time spent to do those repetitive tasks is really key.


It really opens up the opportunity to do things and focus more on strategy and the other things


that you can't leave to automation.


Leveling up your data analysis.


If anyone's familiar with this number, 1,048,576, that's the row limit on Microsoft Excel.


And as marketers, we're swimming in a sea of data.


It's very easy to work with a data set that well exceeds that.


I often work with hundreds of millions of rows of data.


And utilizing a programming language like R or Python is a really good way of handling


that amount of data.


Lastly, literacy.


It's becoming really, really more common in the States to be taught how to program in


elementary school.


So by learning how to program, you're on equal footing with the children of the world, people


that may enter the workplace in the future.


So you don't even have to learn how to program in depth.


But I do recommend you at least understand the concepts and logic behind programming.


Which language should you learn?


Oftentimes I hear people say, you know, I did a little bit of programming in college


or high school and I learned so-and-so language.


And to them I say, you're in great shape.


Stick to whichever programming language you're comfortable with.


You don't have to start from square one.


A lot of the programming language share a common logic.


But if you are starting from square one and you need to just decide on which programming


language I'm going to learn today, I have two recommendations.


If you're going down the path of data analysis, your primary reason for learning how to program


is to work with data and do more sophisticated things with data, then I think there's no


better language than Python.


Python is very well equipped.


There's lots of libraries designed specifically for data analysis.


And it's a very much more robust language than something like R.


If you're going down the path of web development, you want to be a better technical SEO, you


want to understand how websites are constructed, JavaScript is an incredibly robust programming


language that has boomed in usage on websites over the last few years.


It's also very capable of doing back end web development with a language like Node.js,


which is just a variant of JavaScript.


The only issue with learning JavaScript is I would say that you need to learn CSS and


HTML first, so there's a little bit more of a learning curve than, say, learning Python.


Now, I want to go through some basic programming concepts so that you walk away feeling a little


bit more comfortable with the idea of learning programs so it's a little less intimidating.


The first concept I want to go through is the idea of a variable.


These are just like algebra, like basic algebra, so if you can assign x is equal to 2 or any


other value, and then we can use that later.


So x plus 2 is 4.


So variables can have any name, and we're using Python syntax as an example.


So the first variable we have is a variable called animal, and it's equal to the value


cat.


This is a string which is just a bit of text that we assign to it.


Now, variables could be of many different types, so the variable number can be equal


to 2, an integer, or the variable colors can be a list, which is a type of Python array.


Arrays are just variables with multiple values.


So in this instance, colors is equal to red, blue, and green, and it's just denoted with


the brackets.


The next concept I'd like you to understand is conditions.


So if else being a basic condition that we would work with, and it reads a lot like English.


So if the variable animal is equal to cat, which it is, print out the text meow.


If animal wasn't equal to cat, say it was equal to dog, then we would print out woof,


and then the output, since animal is equal to cat, is meow.


Loops.


There's many different types of loops.


I'm going to use a for loop as an example, and again, it reads a little bit like the


English language.


So we have a variable colors which we know is equal to red, blue, and green.


So we want to say for every value in that variable colors, print out that value.


So for x in colors, print x.


It will go through each one, one at a time, and print it out.


So the first value is red, gets printed out.


The second value is blue, gets printed out.


And the last value is green, gets printed out, and the code ceases.


And the last concept I want to explain are functions.


Functions very simply are reusable snippets of code.


So we have a very basic function here, which we define as maz.


So the function maz, which has the value one line of code print wbf for Whiteboard Friday.


If we execute the function maz, it will print out the value Whiteboard Friday wbf.


So all these concepts in themselves aren't very useful, but when you start really programming,


you start stringing them all together.