Text of [500DISTRO] Cracking the SEO Code: Tricks & Tactics To Magnify Search Visibility
Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | rand@moz.com Cracking the SEO Code for 2015: Tactics to Love vs. Leave
Download this Slide Deck bit.ly/seoloveleave
A brief look at how SEO has evolved over the past five years. What Changed?
Ranking algorithms are far more complex more inputs, more subtlety, more quality checks. #1:
Advancements in User Data Signals Via Eric Fischer
An UncannyAbility to Spot Editorial VS. Manipulative Links
Keyword Matching Has Become Query Intent Matching
Personalization by History, Device, Location, and Google+
SEO has become a job description, not a job title. #2:
LinkedInAnalysis Common job titles for those doing SEO include: Marketing Executive Marketing Manager Web Designer Search Marketing Manager Marketing Strategist Marketing ConsultantDirector of Marketing Website Manager
SEOs Have Learned that Doing Their Jobs Isnt Good Enough
Policing of webspam is more aggressive, more difficult to recover from, and less evenly applied. #3:
Non-Editorial LinksAre More Dangerous Than Ever
Webspam Has Become Every Site Owners Problem Via David McSweeney
Google is shortening the searchers path and disintermediating content creators. #4:
Less Opportunity in Many Simplistic Give Me theAnswer Queries
Less Opportunity in Many Simplistic Give Me theAnswer Queries
Less Opportunity in Many Simplistic Give Me theAnswer Queries
Less Opportunity In Some Not-So-Simplistic Queries, Too:
More Opportunity in the Ever-Growing Long Tail Almost 6 Billion queries/day
The ubiquity of social media has broadened the field of influencers. #5:
1997-2011: The Linkerati Rule the Web Via Forrester Research 13% of web users can amplify content
2012-Present: WeAreAll PotentialAmplifiers Via Pew Research Data 72% of web users can amplify content
Disappearing data makes SEO more challenging to measure and improve. #6:
Keyword Referral Data is Gone On average, 87.5% of keywords from Google are now not provided (source)
ASignificant Portion of Search Traffic May Be Falsely Counted as Direct Groupons experiment showing up to 60% of traffic reported as direct may be organic search
How do these changes affect which tactics we can still pursue vs. those we must leave behind? So
Great SEO Is No Longer Just SEO KeywordsLinks Crawl Rankings SEO in 2004
Great SEO Is No Longer Just SEO Keywords Links Crawl Rankings SEO in 2014 Social Content Design & UX Speed Accessibility Email Press & PR CX Webspam Mobile InternationalizationLocalization
Our Job: Choose the Tactics that Marry Our Strengths to Our Opportunities
No tactic will be right for everyone. But, awareness of our potential arsenal is essential.
Tactics to Leave Behind vs. Tactics to Embrace for the Future:
Keyword Research
AdWords-Only Discovery
AdWords-Only Discovery Leave It Behind
AdWords + Suggest + Customer Data Many queries with 100s or 1000s of monthly searches dont show up in AdWords but will show up here.
AdWords + Suggest + Customer Data My favorite tool for keyword suggest research: Keywordtool.io This tool makes the process easier.
AdWords + Suggest + Customer Data Popular questions, phrases, and terms that your audience uses in web forums/social media are excellent sources of keyword data expansion
Content Creation
Create & Scale Keyword-Targeted Pages of Good, Unique Content This example from Wikihow is, granted, a bit ludicrous.
This is a page from Angies List that ranks #1 for Best Plumbers in Medford, OR
This is all the unique content on that page
Youre dreaming! Think you can build pages like that and rank?
Create & Scale Keyword-Targeted Pages of Good, Unique Content Leave It Behind
Modern Criteria for Content: Unique does not appear elsewhere on the web in a search-indexable format Relevant contains terms/phrases the engines can interpret as on-topic Helpful resolves the searchers query (or queries) in a useful, efficient manner Uniquely Valuable provides information thats unavailable (or hard to get) elsewhere on the web Great UX is easy and pleasurable to consume on any device, even with slow connections
AGreat Example from Genius.com Via Shelter from the Storm on Genius
AGreat Example from Genius.com Via Shelter from the Storm on Genius Accurate, readable lyrics Uniquely valuable annotations A community of contributors One click to play Data re: popularity & activity
Link Building
Acquire Links Via Directories, Forums, Account Profiles, etc.
Acquire Links Via Directories, Forums, Account Profiles, etc. Leave It Behind
Acquire Links w/ Off-Topic Infographics & Embeds
Acquire Links w/ Off-Topic Infographics & Embeds Leave It Behind
Acquire Links through Guest Posting & Commenting
Acquire Links through Guest Posting & Commenting Leave It Behind
The Truth: Google doesnt want to count links you can build.
The Truth: Google only wants to count links you editorially earn.
Sadly, there isnt enough time to go into tactics, so check out these resources: Link Building from the Moz Blog Paddy Moogans Link Building eBook ExpertsFavorite Link Building Tactics How to Leverage PR for Link Building The Future of Link Building
Social Media & SEO
Share Socially to Get Rankings No doubt about it theres a strong CORRELATION between tweets (and Facebook and Google+ shares) and higher rankings.
Share Socially to Get Rankings See reports from Googles representatives and Stone Temple Leave It Behind
Social Impacts SEO Indirectly Social shares expose content to those who might link to it (and amplify in other ways) This blog post from OKTrends earned 100s of links after launch
Google+ is the Exception for Personalized/Logged-In Results Because I follow Mark on G+, what he shares/+1s can usually ranks higher when Im logged into my Gmail.
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