Pack Up the Big Top: Insights from MozCon Virtual 2021’s Grand Finale

And just like that, MozCon Virtual 2021 has come to an end. Over the past three days, we’ve seen incredibly insightful presentations on everything from content marketing, to machine learning, to new and exciting SEO tips and tricks. A big thank you to all our speakers, emcees, attendees, and volunteers in front of and behind the camera. It wouldn’t be MozCon without you!

Check out our recaps from day one and day two, and if you missed day three, read on for top-level takeaways! But to get the most out of this year’s MozCon content, make sure to access the video bundle when it goes on sale Friday, and stay tuned for details on MozCon 2022 —

— that’s right! We’ll be back live and in-person next year in Seattle. Can’t wait to see you all there!

Tom Capper — The Fast & The Spurious: Core Web Vitals & SEO

“What if I told you that Core Web Vitals, and this update, are a bluff?”

Tom sure did kick off day three by blowing our minds with his opening line — the update everyone has been obsessing over for the last year isn’t actually all it’s cracked up to be?

Well, sort of.

It turns out we can’t afford to call Google’s bluff, but we can “sort of cheat”. Tom went on to lay out the flaws of Core Web Vitals, which all add up to the fact that they actually encourage terrible optimizations.

So what’s taking so long? As we all know, this roll out has been delayed multiple times. Tom uses a brilliant example of the classic prisoner’s dilemma to explain why:

As it turns out, Google has been contradicting themselves when talking about CWV because they can’t actually roll out updates that undermine the quality of their services — they’re relying on us, the SEOs, to act as the prisoners in their big dilemma of rankings.

<So do Core Web Vitals actually matter? Should we care? Yes and no. Page speed continues to be something we need to worry about, but with CWV, the average increase in ranking for sites that don’t already rank won’t be very much at all.

Tom advised SEOs to take advantage of Google Discover, which is actually a massive, untapped traffic opportunity as it’s more responsive to speed than organic search.

Before he signed off, Tom reiterated:

  1. Prioritize high traffic pages

  2. Metrics can be gamed/optimized

  3. Don’t do any of this at the expense of speed

We won’t dig into the how for all of this here, so definitely check out his presentation in the video bundle!

Luke Carthy — The Ultimate How-To for Faceted Navigation SEO in E-Commerce

After an introduction that got the whole chat laughing (“Hi, I’m Morgan Freeman. Welcome to the afterlife.”), Luke Carthy showed us how he generated a 25% increase in organic traffic using faceted navigation.

Wait, what’s faceted navigation? You’ve definitely run into it if you’ve ever shopped online. Think about the stores that allow you to filter and sort your search. Behind that search is a faceted nav, defining, filtering, and sorting URLs on a website.

If it’s so common, what’s wrong with it? As Luke explains, faceted navs generate hundreds of long, parameterized, filtered URLs. It’s messy, it’s bloated, and bots can’t easily crawl them.

SEOs tend to counteract this bloat by “nofollowing the shit out of” faceted URLs. But when we do that, all of that long-tail gold disappears.

So what’s the solution? As Luke says, “It’s all about balance!”

(Side note: how cute is this photo??)

Luke shared some ways to “make facets sexy” by:

  • Understanding your site’s taxonomy
  • Using filters only to add granularity
  • Using “-” (dash) instead of “_” (underscore)
  • Filtering parameter URLs in GA to spot opportunities
  • Using a consistent structure
  • Limiting indexable parameter options

There were a bunch more actionable tips in this presentation, but we won’t spoil it all for you!

Miracle Inameti-Archibong — Harnessing the Natural Language Toolkit for More Productive SEO

In her quick presentation, MozCon newcomer Miracle walked us through ways to use Natural Language Processing to do our SEO tasks — like keyword research — and even shared some of her own resources to help us do it!

With Miracle’s comprehensive Natural Language Processor with Python, you can analyze up to 10,000 keywords with the click of a button and group them based on category, frequency, and search intent. Don’t worry — even if you aren’t a programmer, Miracle’s scripts are easy enough to plug and play so you can start analyzing immediately.

Miracle then walked us through how to get the script up and running step-by-step. The results were mind-bending. In just a few short clicks, she produced a wealth of keyword data sure to fuel some brilliant strategies and ideas.

To be honest, there was so much information in such a short time frame, this is one we’ll have to revisit again to absorb every tip possible, but click below to access Miracle’s scripts:

Amanda Milligan — A Live Guide to Finding & Filling the Gaps in Your Link Strategy

Amanda kicked off her first MozCon presentation by reiterating the importance of quality over quantity, to the tune of enthusiastic cheers from the MozCon chat box. In today’s climate, quality content is what will get you that authority and trustworthiness today’s marketers (and Google) crave. Quantity may give you a short term boost, but it won’t last and it won’t compound.

But Google is just a robot and they base their assumptions on links: Who owns them and who links to whom? If your competitors are ranking on time.com and you aren’t, then Google will see your competitors more favorably and rank them higher in the SERP.

Amanda reminds us that these gaps are opportunities. If your competitor can get a link on Time.com, then so can you!

Amanda jumps straight to Moz Pro’s Link Intersect — “This tool was made for this kind of analysis!” — measuring up Chewy.com to competitors Petco.com and Petsmart.com to reveal the places where Chewy’s competitors link, but Chewy doesn’t.

One such article on CNN.com links to Petsmart and Petco and features a very cute guinea pig in a suit of armor — is it possible for Chewy to obtain a link to CNN? Yes!

Developing the content is only half the battle. Once you have something you think will resonate, it’s time to start pitching, which is arguably “where many link builders fall short.” In the pitching process, Amanda offers a fool proof plan of attack: “Pitch your content exclusively at first, and then once published, you can begin to take it elsewhere.” Publishers love exclusive content because they can leverage it to drive more views to their own content.

Amanda also drives home another link building golden rule: make sure you research and position your pitches and tailor them to the publisher. Gone are the days of mass outreach, and that won’t serve you well in the long run.

Once you’ve done the work, it’s time to track and record your progress. Take note of all the places your content shows up (anchor text, images, etc.) or whether it is do-follow or not.

Check out Amanda’s Whiteboard Friday on crafting the perfect pitch email for more tips!

Lily Ray — From the Medic Update to Now: How the E-A-T Ecosystem Has Transformed Organic Search

Lily Ray has been studying the evolution of Google and E-A-T for a few years now, and in this presentation, she outlined key changes in how Google perceives content – specifically when it comes to the rise of misinformation.

Since 2016, and especially in the last year, more people turn to Google for information on things like politics, vaccines, COVID, and other important topics. This makes it increasingly necessary for Google to surface reliable information. In times of crisis, things become even more critical, and according to the data, Google begins to favor more authoritative sources versus relevant sources. We don’t know exactly how this is determined, but in her study, the data shows that Google favorably ranks content from reputable sources for potentially controversial keywords.

If there is one thing that Lily wants us to walk away with, it’s the “E-A-T matters in crisis”, and is Google’s quality standard for evaluating content, authors, and websites.

As a result of this, Google saw a sharp decline in search visibility for questionable news sources, which then expanded to include health and science sites, regardless of the technical optimization on those sites.

Lily digs into keyword comparisons, showing how more authoritative sites became increasingly more visible between 2018 and 2021.

Most of the sites that lost visibility were doing some questionable things including:

  • Leveraging questionable authors

  • Had poor reputations

  • Published deceptive content

  • Lacked sufficient sources

  • Published dangerous medical advice

  • Included hate speech

  • Included excessive affiliate or sales links

From there, Lily dug into 10 key ways Google has changed, and we encourage you to check out her slides and take a look for yourself.

What do all these changes mean for SEO? The landscape is more complex and competitive than ever, so it’s important to be reasonable with your organic search goals and always put E-A-T at the forefront of your SEO Strategy.

Kameron Jenkins — The Content Refresh: How to Do More With Less

Kameron Jenkins is no stranger to content. She manages multiple blogs and currently works for e-commerce powerhouse, Shopify.

When it comes to content, she knows that the best way to regain lost traffic and give your content new life is through a content refresh. In her presentation, she walked us through her exact process for identifying and updating old content. Surprisingly, most content marketers only dedicate 10-25% of their time to content refreshes, even though a content refresh can lead to more ROI in the long term.

How do you identify the content that could benefit from a refresh? Look at your Google Analytics Landing Page report alongside Google Search Console, and prioritize content based on goal conversions, trending topics, and business priorities.

Next, it’s time to refresh. When moving into the execution, you’ll want to ask yourself three key questions:

  • What’s table stakes?

  • What will give you the competitive advantage?

  • And what will maximize conversions?

Other content refresh opportunities to look out for are consolidation, query targeting, and internal linking.

How can you stand out from the competition in your content refresh? Incorporate original research and expert quotes to beef up the authority and originality of your post.

Lastly, maximize your conversions by testing out your CTA placement and make your offers relevant to your audience.

She left us with some wise words of wisdom, “SEO is like owning a car. Even when the car is paid off, you still need to conduct regular maintenance to keep that engine running.”

Wil Reynolds — The 3 Most Important Search Marketing Tools…Your Heart, Your Brain, & Your [Small] Ego

Wil brought the energy yet again for his ninth MozCon presentation, closing out the conference with a bang. His message was simple yet powerful: Your top three tools are your heart, your brain, and your small ego. But what does that mean, exactly?

Small ego

Wil began by introducing the concept of intellectual humility, or the recognition that some of the things you believe just might be wrong. He urged us to listen to the people around us who say there’s a better way — even brand-new coworkers or recent college grads whose ideas you might otherwise discount.

And don’t feel badly that you might be wrong — Wil posits that not knowing your own ignorance is just part of the human condition. He shared a quote from Upton Sinclair that was especially poignant:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Heart

A hundred years ago, no business needed SEO. They needed customers, profits, and sales. And as true then as it is now, they needed to know their customers.

One slide stood out loud and clear: The less you understand your customer, the more you spend to acquire them. And as Wil said, reports that lack dollar signs don’t land on real decision makers’ desks. Here’s where your brain comes in.

Brain

Wil presented a bit of a conundrum: making decisions based on your gut may be easy and comfortable, but it’s the data that gets you the insights you need to create and test hypotheses. However, exhaustive data — the kind of data where opportunity lives — is probably too big for your laptop to handle. What’s an SEO to do?

Of course he had answers! Wil’s suggestion was to harness the power of ngrams. With the help of a tool like PowerBI or BigQuery and using ngrams to examine all the search terms, you can find all your ranking results and see where your search term isn’t in the title.

There’s too much goodness to cram into a short recap, so you’ll definitely want to get yourself a copy of the MozCon video bundle when it’s ready for purchase. Until then, a few final suggestions from Wil:

  • Examining all your data is the only way to capture all your opportunities; resist the urge to pare it down to the top 20%. Every time you shrink your data down, you’re missing out on opportunities that someone else can see.

  • See every data set through a competitive lens: if all else is the same, how do you create value?

  • Combine your paid and SEO data together — get the dollar signs in those reports and get in front of key decision makers

  • Learn SQL. You’ll be able to search for exactly what you need within your own data, you won’t have to rely on others, and your hypotheses will benefit from your newfound data freedom.

  • Be brave enough to suck at something new. Stop doing the thing that you feel comfortable with. Run your own experiments and validate your hypotheses. It’ll be worth it in the end!

Thanks everyone for a wonderful show! And we’ll see you in person next year!

Day Two Learnings From the Three-Ring MozCon Circus

Day one of MozCon Virtual gave us a great start to this year’s conference – from surviving the COVID news agenda, to the science of purchasing power, to game-changing ways to use the Google Search Console API. If day one was a preview of things to come, I knew we were all in for a treat as we headed into day two!

With that said, day two has arrived!

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Oh, and before I forget, remember that dance breaks are not just okay, but encouraged at MozCon.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Ross Simmonds – Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors To Drive Content Results

In this session, Ross talked about the parallels between content marketing/SEO and the world of investing. I am a lover of analogies, so I was excited to see how Ross was going to show us how an investment mindset can be applied to content marketing and SEO. As someone who loves SEO, and investing, I was pumped for this one.

Ross began by telling a story about his investment in General Motors stock. He put a lot of money into the stock…and it crashed. Ross had not done enough research into GM before making his investment.

The lesson: you need to invest time into doing your homework! You need to understand the market before you jump in. The same applies to SEO.

We all hope that our investments will deliver a return, but in 2020 we were all tested during the pandemic. Many companies put the investment of SEO on pause…and that was a mistake. Even during a recession, people still have a strong desire for content and information.

As Ross explained, every piece of content you create is an asset, and to see the most from our investments, we need to “invest more — guess less”.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Content presents money printing capabilities, and major companies are starting to realize this.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Needless to say, Ross left us all wanting to diversify our content portfolios!

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Areej AbuAli — Taking Charge of Your Indexability: How to Optimize and Prioritize Your Technical Work

If you’re ready to take control of your website indexing, this session is for you! With a focus on aggregators and classifieds, Areej shared advice on how to best reduce index bloat for large websites.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

She acknowledged that, while we are fully in control of how Google crawls and indexes our site, it can feel scary!

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

So if we’re suggesting audits, let’s focus on recommendations that can have an impact. Let’s “drop the 100-page audit!”. Websites do not (and most probably should not) need to have every single page indexed. Instead, focus on indexing pages that have the potential to provide good search results.

Honestly, there were so many amazing insights from this presentation, this is one you’ll want to revisit!

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Joy Hawkins — To Post or Not to Post: What We Learned From Analyzing Over 1,000 Google Posts

What value do Google Posts have, and how should the average SMB prioritize them? Joy Hawkins dove headfirst into the data from two studies to answer these questions.

Joy opened up by sharing a Mario Kart analogy. Joy is a super competitive person. She shared how she followed a similar approach for this study as she did when she was working towards beating Dave DiGregorio at Mario Kart. Let’s just say that it required a lot of research, tracking, and analysis.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Joy shared a disclaimer and some initial considerations for the presentations data:

  • The data set only had a total of 36 conversions

  • Clicks in Google Analytics DO NOT equal clicks in Google My Business Insights

Study #1

The first study Joy covered analyzed over 1,000 Google Posts to see what types perform better based on clicks and conversions while measuring the impact of various features such as stock photos, emojis, titles, and more. Here are the types of Google Posts that Joy analyzed:

  • Offer Posts

  • COVID Posts

  • Event Posts

  • Update Posts

Joy also summarized the worst-performing post types. And the winners are:

  • Reviews

  • Seasonal/Holiday

  • Products (or services)

  • Who We Are (bios)

Study #2

The second study looked at whether posting on Google has any influence on where your business ranks in the local pack. The conclusion? Google Posts had no measurable impact on rankings.

Joy summarized by providing a “Successful Google Post Blueprint” — this is one to save for later!

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Joyce Collardé — Maximize Your Conversions: Harnessing Full-Funnel Optimization for B2B Success

In this session, Joyce covered the long sales cycles for B2B businesses that pose a unique set of challenges for converting visitors into coveted users. Success requires a strategic approach that goes beyond the landing page to include your entire site.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Joyce walked through strategies for three tried-and-true methods for increasing your conversion rate and winning more business:

  • Goal #1: Attracting users to your website

  • Goal #2: Giving users the best experience and leading them to conversion points

  • Goal #3: Tracking success and encouraging return visitors

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Casie Gillette — Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice

I love the honesty in this tweet from Casie!

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

In her presentation, Casie looked at content from an entirely different perspective and talked about how you can start creating content on your own terms, because really, there’s no one way to do content marketing.

According to Casie, counterintuitive marketing is “the idea of bucking trends to do what is right for YOUR site”. Casie showed that more content is NOT always best. Sometimes optimizing existing content can be far more powerful than creating new content.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

There is no one size fits all solution to content marketing. Things change and sometimes you need to think counterintuitively.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

How do we do this? Casie suggests a few focus areas:

Performance

    • What were your goals and did you hit them?

    • Utilize Google Search Console to find opportunities

    Competitors

    • Don’t copy competitors, but pay close attention to what they are doing for ideas. What is working well that we can do better?

    • Utilize social media platforms, such as LinkedIn where you can gather intel on the ads that your competitors are running.

    Search and keywords

      • Don’t forget to go back each year and re-evaluate the keywords that you are targeting

      • Remember, that just because something is driving traffic, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right traffic.

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      Brie E Anderson — Reporting for Duty: Why You Need to Start Using GA4 TODAY

      Despite some pre-conference nerves, Brie absolutely blew us away with all her insights!

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      She also challenged us to get started with GA4 now — before we have to.

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      Brie told us that in GA4 we’ll find:

      • EASY, ADVANCED, TRACKING

      • BADASS (& CUSTOM) VISUALS

      • GOOGLE MAY TELL US SECRETS

      But also highlighted that it is NOT a replacement for Universal Analytics, so you need to track both.

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      You might ask, then what are the benefits of using GA4? I’ll let some of Brie’s fans outline some highlights:

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      What are you waiting for? Get your website into GA4!

      Rob Ousbey — Beyond the Basics: 5 SEO Tricks for Uncovering Advanced Insights from Your SEO Data

      In this session, Rob showed us how to breathe new life into our standard SEO data, and we walked away with more advanced insights — and new tools — that are sure to impress our team (and our boss!)

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      And what are the five SEO tricks?

      1. Find link opportunities from the SERP

      2. Group ranking keywords to spot split opportunities

      3. Tag URLs to find real issues

      4. Tag GA for category-level insights

      5. Tag competitors’ top URLs for ideas

      Be sure to check out Rob’s presentation in the MozCon video bundle when it’s out on Friday for even more amazing tips!

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      Britney Muller — The Cold Hard Truth about CTR and Other Common Metrics

      Britney closed out day two by showing us how to quash our reporting woes and make easy work of identifying exactly why your website’s performance changed.

      She asked us what makes superforecasters — a group that has predicted future events with a great deal of accuracy — so successful. Before giving us the answer, she reminded us that it’s really easy to be led astray by data — but had some tips and tools to share to help make sure we don’t get too off track.

      So, what made superforecasters so successful? Their ability to rethink everything. To do the same, Britney challenged us to:

      • Think like a scientist

      • Define our identity in terms of values, not opinions

      • Seek out information that goes against our views

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

      Day two — done!

      Wow! Only one more day left for this year’s MozCon! What stood out the most for you on day two? Tell us on Twitter with #MozCon!

      Come One, Come All! The MozCon Virtual 2021 Day One Recap

      Our favorite time of the year is here! The second ever MozCon Virtual kicked off yesterday with attendees from over 35 countries. There were networking rooms, photo booth pics, and live tweets. It almost felt like we were back together in one place (just minus the donuts).

      Lack of donuts aside, everyone was super excited to be back at MozCon for another action-packed conference. Day one’s speakers brought their A-game and really got people thinking.

      For those of you who may have missed it, or those of you who had a hard time keeping up with this three ring circus, here’s a quick recap!

      Sarah Bird — Welcome to MozCon

      Moz’s fearless leader started MozCon Virtual off with a bang! She introduced Moz Group, a result of the merger with J2. Then, she announced two product releases — one in alpha and one in beta! Both will be further explained by Mozzers later in the week.

      Sarah’s introduction concluded with a moving tribute to Russ Jones. You can share your own memories with Russ or donate to his family at RememberingRussJones.com. 

      Shannon McGuirk — Lessons in Surviving the Covid News Agenda & What it Means for the Future of Digital PR

      As always, Shannon started out strong with some radical transparency. She walked us through Aira’s journey through COVID and how it changed everything. 

      In past MozCon presentations, Shannon has shown us the outreach strategies that Aira has depended on for several years, but 2020 threw everyone for a loop. In the first two weeks of lockdown, Aira lost 50% of their revenue. Something had to change.

      Actually, everything had to change.

      We got insight into Aira’s three-prong, PR future-proofing system that developed as a result:

      1. Ideation: using the ROR framework of relevancy, opinion, resolution

      2. Production: create proven frameworks that can be customized for your client

      3. Promotion: through accessing, communicating, and having perspective

      Shannon gave us the nitty gritty of how this system works for Aira, complete with actual photos of their best-performing, always-ready frameworks. Honestly, it felt like we were seeing something confidential, but we were here for it.

      Flavilla Fongang — The Science of Purchasing Behavior: How to Use it Effectively to Attract & Convert More Prospects Into Customers

      Flavilla was ready to prescribe some tactical medicine to those looking to increase their conversion rate. She jumped right in with explaining how our brains function. Ya know, limbic system, neocortex, and reptilian brain? Don’t worry, we didn’t either!

      She broke them down as the emotional brain (limbic), rational (neocortex), and fight or flight (reptilian). Then Flavilla asked the big question: which brain has the most impact on buying decisions? The answer (which shocked most) was the reptilian brain.

      Flavilla took us through six ways the reptilian brain can be stimulated.

      But it wouldn’t be a MozCon presentation without something that can be put into action today. Flavilla dropped all sorts of tactics to test: putting the CTA closer to the consumer’s picture, using the power of the gaze, tapping into negative emotion, showing contrast (think before and after), and putting the most important information first.

      We could have listened to Flavilla talk all day long. Hearing her take on buyer behavior was a bit like looking into a glass ball and getting answers to all of our questions. We can’t wait to put it into action!

      Dr. Pete Meyers — Rule Your Rivals: From Data to Action

      Always a crowd pleaser, Dr. Pete showed off a new Moz tool currently in Beta: True Competitor. True Competitor is a project Moz has been working on for the last few years, and this year it’s finally ready to take the stage! (You can request early access to True Competitor here.)

      Dr. Pete used the new tool to remind us that those we assume to be our competitors sometimes aren’t actually our competition at all. Instead of focusing on who we think we’re losing traffic to, we need to be focused on who is preventing us from making money.

      Using the new True Competitor tool, and a few cool search modifiers, Dr. Pete was able to find some opportunity keywords to test out.

      The process looked a bit like this:

      • Use True Competitor to identify potential keywords

      • Use search modifiers to find the ranking pages for the competition

      • Find Moz’s current ranking content

      • Create content using the similar keywords

      • Link to the most updated and relevant content

      We knew that Dr. Pete would bring the heat, but it’s safe to say he outdid himself this year. 

      Noah Learner — Game-Changing Ways to Use the Google Search Console API

      This first-time MozCon speaker came ready to play! Right away, Noah gave us some perspective on the actual limitations of Google Search Console. As most of us know, Search Console only gives you access to 1,000 rows. Well, Noah knew that there was a lot more data to be seen and started dabbling with the API.

      Apparently this led to a 15-hour journey down the GSC rabbit hole, as Noah started working on creating a custom Google Search Console tool using Big Query and Google Data Studio. This tool, Explorer for Search, has already gotten some buzz from those in the industry.

      Honestly, if you look at the Twitter feed for #MozCon, there aren’t a ton of tweets because nobody could keep up with him! Noah moved rapidly through exactly how he built Explorer for Search with his team, and how they’re using it.

      Almost instantly, Noah and his team found over $300,000 of keywords that weren’t available in Search Console. They did this through building in position sorting, top of funnel/ bottom of funnel sorting, branded vs. non branded filters, and more.

      We cannot wait to play with this and get started with the Search Console API!

      Dana DiTomaso — Build for Search: Modern Web Dev That Puts SEO First

      A long time MozCon favorite, Dana DiTomaso put on her coach’s hat for this year’s session. Far too often, we find ourselves in awkward situations that require us to scrap all of our work and start over again.

      Dana ran into this way too many times, so she and her team came up with a better solution. She was ready to make us, and our web dev processes, agile(ish).

      She showed us her team’s entire process from presenting keyword research (IN A PIE CHART?!), to using GatherContent to create a website blueprint for clients, all the way to wireframe creation and presentation.

      At each step, anyone can jump in and see what is going on and add to the conversation or process. It’s far less linear and allows for more collaboration.

      Jackie Chu — Internationalization Errors: How to Go Global Without Losing All of Your Traffic

      With a track record like Jackie’s, it’s hard to imagine not blowing minds. Jackie started by explaining one of the most complex SEO concepts: Hreflang. This explanation led to a few tactical suggestions right off of the bat:

      • Define target language and country

      • Self-canonicalize all URLs

      • Use consistent URL patterns

      Honestly, there were so many takeaways from this presentation that they were hard to keep track of. Imagine, all of that information on Hreflang alone was in the first 17 slides… and this presentation was 60 slides long!

      You’ll definitely want to revisit this presentation in the video bundle, available Friday, to glean all insights possible! 

      Cyrus Shepard — Mastering 3 Click + Engagement Signals for Higher Rankings/Traffic

      Cyrus, a long-time MozCon emcee, takes the stage himself this year to discuss how Google may — or may not — use user engagement signals as an input in ranking websites.

      Cyrus started by explaining how 20 years of Google patents describe three different types of click signals they could measure: first clicks, long clicks, and last clicks. He then walked through a multitude of small-scale SEO experiments that attempted to influence these click signals to see if he could influence rankings.

      Some of the experiments included:

      • Optimizing Meta Descriptions in non-traditional ways

      • Removing Title Tag “Boilerplate”

      • Improving the visibility of “Related Articles”

      • Adding FAQs

      Finally, Cyrus shared some case studies including the migration of the Moz Q&A — which involved over 100,000 URLs — and how they improved user engagement.

      At the end, Cyrus emphasized that SEO is not about manipulating numbers, but that “User satisfaction is ranking factor #1.” After watching this presentation, you’ll definitely walk away with several ideas for engaging your visitor.

      5 Ways to Measure and 3 Tips to Improve Website Engagement

      Today is the last day to purchase MozCon Virtual 2021 tickets! As a sneak preview of the amazing content you can expect to see, please enjoy this very special Whiteboard Friday episode from MozCon speaker Dana DiTomaso, where she walks you through the ways you can measure and improve your website engagement in order to determine whether or not you actually need to redo your website. 

      And don’t forget to grab your ticket to see Dana’s presentation, Build for Search: Modern Web Dev That Puts SEO First, along with our other amazing speakers on July 12-14: 

      Secure Your Seat at MozCon Virtual

      Photo of the whiteboard with tips for measuring and improving website engagement.
      Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

      Video Transcription

      Howdy, Moz fans. My name is Dana DiTomaso. I’m President and partner at Kick Point, and we’re a digital marketing agency headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I’m going to be talking to you today about a question that I think many people have, which is how do you actually measure website engagement.

      I think it’s something a lot of people struggle with because you might be approaching a period with your website where you’re thinking: Is time to redo the website? Is the website actually meeting our goals? But you may not have a lot of the things set up in order to measure engagement in a way that helps you answer those questions. A lot of times you might just be shooting in the dark and saying, “I think this is what’s happening.”

      But is it truly what’s happening? You may think you need to add an expensive tool, some sort of screen measurements or something like that in order to get what you need. But there’s a lot you can do with basic setup in Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics to measure website engagement. So that’s what I’m going to talk to you about today. So over here I have different ways to measure, and then here behind me I have different ways to improve.

      Ways to measure website engagement

      So we’re going to start with the stuff we’re going to measure, and then we’re going to move on to the things we’re going to improve. 

      1. Scroll depth

      So first off, think about scroll depth. This is one of the basic metrics that I think people think about but they don’t really do a lot with. So one of the things that if you’re using Google Analytics 4, there’s a built-in scroll depth metric, which you might already be using, but that only measures 90% scroll and that might be too far for a lot of people.

      What I would recommend is, if you’re not using GA4 yet or if you’re still using just Universal, even if you are using 4, make sure you’re also measuring at least 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. You can also measure 90%. You can also measure 10%. I’ve seen lots of different ways. You can measure 1%. It seems a little much, but you can do that too.

      What you’re looking for there is the idea of setting individual triggers for each of these scroll depths, because what you want to know is when that 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% is hit, but you don’t just want to save them as events in Google Analytics, because there isn’t a lot you can do with that in terms of math. What you want to do is you want to set each scroll depth as a custom metric.

      If you aren’t familiar with custom metrics, in Google Analytics there are dimensions and there are metrics. So a dimension is something like the city that people were from or the page that they were visiting. A metric is the number of page views or users that happened. So, in this case, it’s the number of times that somebody viewed a page versus the number of times that people went 25% of the way down the page or 50% or 75%.

      When you save those as custom metrics, then you can do some math to figure out what the average scroll depth is, for example, and that’s a really nice way to figure out if people are actually looking at your stuff or if they are interested, or maybe there’s a really interesting CTA that’s driving them away, but then they’re not seeing something even cooler further down, or maybe the page looks like it ends, so they’re not going any further. There are lots of interesting things you can figure out from that. 

      2. Was an important CTA viewed? 

      The next thing is: Was an important CTA actually viewed? So I think this is a metric that not a lot of people really think about. You sprinkle CTAs all over your site, but you don’t know if anyone is actually looking at them. A page view tells you nothing, because a page view is just I opened up the page and I might have done it accidentally.

      Maybe I hit back right away. It’s still a page view. I could have the tab open in my browser forever. Maybe I don’t want to get rid of it yet. That’s a page view too. It doesn’t mean they actually saw anything useful or did anything with that information. So one of the things you can do in Google Tag Manager is you can create something called an element visibility trigger.

      An element visibility trigger is basically what it sounds like. Was the element visible? So let’s say, for example, you want to record each call to action, and each call to action is in a specific div called CTA, for example. So in Google Tag Manager, you would set up an element visibility trigger, and you would say every time the CTA is visible I want you to record an event, and then you would know how many times people actually saw that CTA.

      Another example we’ve done for this is sometimes clients will have forms that are only open if you click a button, and so then we would record how many times people actually clicked that button to open the form, because your conversion rate, if you’re just looking at page views, isn’t really accurate. It’s not actually seeing the form itself. So that way you’re getting a much better sense of how many people are actually viewing the form and how many people are actually filling out the form, and that can also help you make some good user behavior decisions with regards to your website.

      3. Form engagement

      Now, moving on to form engagement, some other stuff that I think you should be measuring is people, how they engage with forms, because, let’s be honest, that required thing, it sucks. I know a lot of people are like, “Well, not all the fields are required. Look at this huge form that we have, but only 6 fields of the 18 are required.” That’s still not a great experience.

      We’ve had forms for a long time now. Not a lot of people still know that the little star means required. They think they have to fill everything out. It seems intimidating. They walk away. I think it’s pretty well-accepted knowledge by now, but I also think a lot of people are like, “Oh, but we have to have this big form for reasons.” So what you want to know is how people are engaging with that form.

      Again, in Google Tag Manager, there is a piece of JavaScript you can run that will record when people enter a form field and then did they fill it out or did they skip it, as in they just clicked into it and they clicked out of it. So I’m going to link in the transcript for this to a JavaScript recipe, made by the company Bounteous, that you can put into Google Tag Manager to record this information.

      I find it really useful, particularly when you’re in that situation where you’re saying to a client or your team, “I think we have too many fields in this form.” They’re like, “No, everybody uses them.” You’re like, “Do they?” Now you’ll know through this engagement trigger. 

      4. Google Translate usage

      Something else that I like to check too is Google Translate usage, because again maybe your site is just in English, but you maybe are wondering, “Is it worth translating our site into Spanish or French?”

      There are more languages than English in the world. So one of the things you can check is if people are using Google Translate to view your website. Again, in the transcript, I will link to a recipe for Google Tag Manager to actually check if people are using Google Translate to view your site, which is really interesting and frankly pretty eye-opening for clients a lot of the time. So I recommend using that as well. 

      5. Accessibility tool use

      Then accessibility tool use. Accessibility is a conversation that I think every company should be having with regards to their website, because people use assistive devices to manage their website usage and how they’re actually engaging with websites. Not a lot of websites really make accessible experiences unfortunately. So one of the tools that we use is called Monsido Page Assist.

      If you go to our website at kickpoint.ca, you’ll see this little widget down in the corner, and then if you click that, then we record that, yes, somebody actually engaged with this. Then we can see what percentage of people on our site are using that widget in order to make their experience better, and then we know maybe we need to improve something or maybe this is just them changing the fonts or whatever it might be.

      So that’s another really good thing that you might want to measure when you take a look at your website. 

      Ways to improve website engagement

      So I’ve given you some ideas of stuff you can measure. Now, how are ways that you can improve just generally with this data or overall in terms of your website? So this is this section over here, the ways to improve section. 

      1. Tie metrics to your revenue and conversion goals

      So the first thing obviously, and I always talk about this in every talk, is you really need to make sure to tie these metrics to your revenue goals.

      I think that is just one of the biggest mistakes that people make, when reporting in Analytics or really anything, is you’re not tying it to anything. You’re measuring for the sake of measuring, but you’re not saying what the impact of this is. So, for example, visitors who see this call to action are 90% more likely to convert than people who don’t. Being able to measure that and being able to say that stat with confidence, maybe not that stat specifically, but a stat, when thing A happens, we make more money, that is how you get changes done, and that’s one of the best ways to communicate this.

      So if you can take any of this measurement stuff and communicate it in a way that really gets it across to whoever is the decision-maker, if it isn’t you, that if you make this change, you’re going to make more money, hit your goals, get to your revenue goals faster, that is a really easy way to make sure that this stuff happens. 

      2. Record the full referrer path

      Next thing, one of the things that I think, and again I’ll link in the transcript to this — it’s a lot of JavaScript and stuff, so I don’t necessarily want to write JavaScript out on my whiteboard here — is recording the full referrer path.

      Now you might know that in Google Analytics there is a dimension called referrer path, but it isn’t necessarily useful. The full referrer path is something that’s available in the browser a lot of the time, but it isn’t something that is captured by default in Google Analytics. By capturing that full referrer path, you can get a little bit more information about exactly where people are coming from.

      I find that that is also really helpful information because it can help you sort of segment out a little bit better and say it isn’t just people from say Reddit who are coming to the site. It’s people coming from Reddit from this specific subreddit, and those are the people buying our stuff. That is additional information that you didn’t necessarily have available to you. So that, I call it the “complete referrer,” is a nice custom dimension to add into your Google Analytics implementation to just get that little bit more information to help you make better decisions and figure out ways to improve.

      3. Use a ?subscriber=yes parameter

      Then the third thing, this is like a personal pet peeve of mine. If I’m already on your newsletter, don’t show me a giant pop-up asking me to sign up for your newsletter when I click a link in your newsletter to get to your website. People think, “Well, I don’t know how to do this.” So here’s how you do it. You can add a parameter to your URLs. It’s like ?subscriber=yes, for example.

      Then when you deliver that popover CTA, don’t deliver it if that parameter exists in the URL that the person is viewing. That means they’re already on the list. You can show them something saying, “Thank you for being a subscriber.” It might be a little bit creepy, because people may not know how you know that they’re a subscriber. But that’s one of the ways that you can just generally improve things for your user experience.

      So only show the CTA to the people who could conceivably convert, because otherwise you’re just wasting bandwidth. I’m already on your mailing list. Stop trying to sell me. You already sold me. So I would really recommend adding this parameter. You can think about it for others CTAs as well. So, for example, if someone comes to the website via a link in an invoice or a receipt, like they bought something, then don’t try to sell them the thing that they just bought.

      There are lots of things you can do with Google Tag Manager and reading different parameter outputs in URLs and then making decisions based on what’s shown or not shown based on what’s in those URLs. That’s again an easy way to improve things without necessarily having to measure a lot of engagement. It’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.

      Conclusion

      So hopefully some of this measurement stuff, the ways to measure and the ways to improve, will help you build a better website experience. 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. 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. Thank you.

      Video transcription by Speechpad.com

       Tweet your questions and comments about website engagement using #MozBlog!

      Fulfill Untapped Customer Demands Through Your Faceted Navigation

      Faceted navigation allows customers to narrow down search results based on specific product attributes. They typically exist on Product Listing Pages (PLPs) and are a great way to help users intuitively discover products but managing this filtering system is a common SEO challenge. Crawling and indexation need to be controlled.

      However, if we look beyond their inherent functionality, facets can offer us considerable potential. By centering your secondary navigation on long-tail keyword opportunities, you’ll be able to strategically utilize consumer intent, secure additional web conversions, and boost revenue levels.

      Match consumer intent with long-tail search queries

      Having an established brand and a solid domain backlink profile won’t guarantee success. This is great news for smaller brands, as industry giants aren’t necessarily going to win at this game.

      If we search for “long sleeve wedding dresses”, we can see how David’s Bridal’s optimized facet page (Domain Authority: 67/100, Page Authority: 47 / 100) has obtained the top ranking position, while Nordstrom’s result (Domain Authority: 87/100, Page Authority: 39/100) appears in the third position for this particular query. We’ll take a look at what makes this page so effective later.

      When looking at how we can optimize faceted navigations, it’s important to recognize that product attributes convey consumer needs and aspirations. If, for example, I’m looking for a wedding dress, then I may tailor my search by the color, fabric, neckline shape, and the sleeve length.

      According to the search demand curve, long-tail queries account for up to 70% of all organic searches. They are highly targeted queries that offer big traffic-driving opportunities.

      In the last few years, we’ve seen a big shift in the industry towards capitalizing this intent with long-form content. Blog articles and style guides have become the go-to methods for many to capture these visitors, as we can see from the examples taken from Marks & Spencers’ “Inspire Me” section:

      People often look for inspiration when they’re shopping, and these pages provide an effective way to add more internal links to category and product pages. But relying on this approach is one-dimensional, given that these deeper content pages tend to have lower PageRank. An extensive amount of time and effort will, therefore, be required to achieve the desired result.

      In comparison, Product Listing Pages usually target broader search terms, and faceted navigations typically exist as passive functions. This is because they’re often blocked from crawlers, making them devoid of any SEO value. Waterstones (a well-known British bookstore) is one retailer that applies this rule for their on-page filters:

      In this particular example, I’ve applied a filter to only show me books for 5 – 8 year olds, but the appended URL (https://ift.tt/3xrpOJS) is blocked in the robots.txt file. This is going to prevent such pages from being served in the SERPs despite them having the potential to meet specific customer needs. This shows that there can be a fundamental disconnect in matching customer intent to the pages we’re providing them in the organic results.

      From the diagram below, we can see how editorial content typically focuses on the “awareness” and “interest” stages, whilst Product Listing Pages tend to be more in line with the “consideration” and “purchase” phases:

      Serving the right content to users throughout their buying journey is pivotal to success. For many retailers, competitors are continuing to prioritize broader, high-volume keywords in saturated markets. They’re targeting the same terms to secure a proportion of the same search traffic. This is a very challenging prospect to face, and without carving out a gap in the marketplace, they won’t necessarily deliver the results they seek to secure. Likewise, relying on informational guides to target long-tail keywords means that you’re missing a large percentage of users who have very specific buying requirements. Yes, they’re ready to make a purchase!

      By shifting your focus to address your customer’s real needs and expectations, you’ll be able to deliver a satisfying, frictionless experience at every interaction and all the way through to that final purchase.

      The solution

      Step 1: Conduct long-tail keyword research

      Build a really comprehensive view of your potential customers by harnessing data from a variety of sources, including:

      a) Keyword research tools like Moz, Google Keyword Planner, and Answer The Public.

      b) The SERPs — get inspiration from the auto-suggest results, People Also Ask, and the related search links at the bottom of the page.

      c) Competitor activity — aside from using SEO monitoring software, you can use a data mining extension tool like Scraper, which will extract faceted options directly from competitor Product Listing Pages. These tools are often free to download and allow you to quickly transfer product categories.

      d) Your Google Search Console, Analytics, and PPC accounts to determine which keywords and URLs are securing the highest number of visits and web conversions. Internal search data can also give you great consumer insights.

      e) Speak to your merchandising team to understand product demands and fulfillment capabilities.

      Step 2: Group into meaningful sub-topics

      Once you’ve collated all this information into a spreadsheet, you’ll be able to discover long-tail, consideration-orientated keywords. While individually they may not boast huge monthly search estimates, they can collectively highlight where purchase intentions can be better fulfilled.

      To help illustrate this point, we can look at a small subset of lingerie keywords and the facets the searches represent:

      Table showing various average monthly searches and facet categorizations for various keywords.

      From the table above we can quickly see a pattern emerging with color and material variations appearing across the search terms. We can then substantiate this information with session and revenue estimates with the use of a recognized CTR model. This enables us to help forecast the potential organic uplift and quantify the size of the prize for a number of different scenarios that are on offer from each new facet combination. This may include estimations for securing position 10, 7, 5, 3 and 1 in Google.

      One thing to note here is that it’s worth excluding synonyms, as they will falsely inflate your calculations. An example here would be to exclude “storage drawers” (22.2k monthly searchers) when reviewing the performance for “chest of drawers” (201k m/s). Including both variants will cause a false positive result and will lead you to draw incorrect conclusions.

      Step 3: Dig deeper into broader terms around offers, ratings, and price

      These product filters are found in the “Sort” dropdown box and, from my experience, these are set to “noindex” from the outset as they simply allow users to re-order page results. Certainly, content management systems like Shopify and Shopware have this as a default.

      This makes sense since their purpose is to allow visitors to simply sort or narrow page content rather than offering alternative results and additional value (which is offered through faceted navigation). As such, filter typically produce duplicate results which should not be discoverable beyond the immediate moment. But this hard-and-fast rule doesn’t always apply perfectly in the real world. This is why we need to look at our individual industries and understand what’s important to our unique set of customers.

      If we look at the world of gifting, we often see people shopping with a particular budget in mind. Therefore, terms like “birthday gift under £20” (40 m/s) or “Secret Santa gift under £10” (2.9k m/s) are reasonably common, and opening up relevant listing pages could be useful for shoppers.

      Step 4: The technical steps

      Facet taxonomies are hugely complex and the number of attributes that can be strung together increases with the size of the domain. We, therefore, need to carefully manage the flood gates and mitigate against any potential risks including crawl inefficiencies and link equity dilution.

      We can do this by:

      1. Avoiding thin/doorway pages by regularly re-assessing your product offering. For instance, you may consider there to be little value in creating a new listings page if you’re selling a very small range of low price point products. In this case, you may decide against opening up an additional Product Listing Page when you sell as few as 10 eligible products. However, this is not a fixed rule, so it’s quite possible that your criteria may be lower for particular product lines. Either way, these numbers will change over time. Consider seasonal trends, when new collections are launched, and when they become discontinued. Setting up a product retirement strategy to manage expired products and categories at scale in parallel with this step is also highly recommended.

      2. Prevent content cannibalization by arranging selected facets according to their value and significance. “Size” is very important for some electrical goods like TVs, laptops, and cameras, but is less so for beauty accessories or vacuum cleaners. You must also make sure page content is distinctive and reflects the focus of your chosen facet(s). Refer to step 5 for more details.

      3. Follow the sequence in which adjectives and facets are typically selected by your customers. This can vary depending on where your audience lives. So, whilst products generally have five or more distinguishable features, English vernacular determines that we use more than four adjectives (e.g. size + color + material + shape) to describe something.

      4. Control the controllables by dealing with overlapping variations. This typically occurs when multiples co-exist and each exhibits good search metrics. For instance, it’s reasonable for someone to simultaneously look for several color and/or fabric combinations in the different ways below.

      Chart showing the faceted navigation flow for cotton white t-shirt and white cotton t-shirt.

        When this situation occurs, we should follow the same linguistic rules as above and choose a preferred sequence. In this case, it would be color + material + product type.

        In comparison to the noindex tag suggested for on-page filters you should canonicalize unnecessary facets to their parent page (remembering that this is merely a hint and not a directive). This will enable you to control how crawlers deal with highly comparable result pages and will, therefore, help to prevent your site from being demoted in the SERPs. Dynamic search parameters should continue to be defined with a “noindex, nofollow” meta robots tag, disallowed in the robots.txt file, and configured through Google’s URL parameter tool (within your Search Console account) to tell crawlers the purpose of your parameters and how you would like them to be treated. This is a helpful guide on parameter handling for Googlebots, but bear in mind that this last tip won’t influence how Bing or Yahoo user-agents interpret these pages.

        5. Open your facets in phases and cultivate it into a test-and-learn process. This will enable you to identify issues a lot sooner and implement facet-wide solutions in a timely manner. Without having to unravel these additional layers of complexity, problems such as crawl inefficiencies, PageRank dilution, or excessive indexation can be swiftly resolved.

          To show you what this could look like, I’ve provided a phasing plan that was created for one of our e-commerce clients. Our research showed a significant SEO opportunity for opening up some of the facets and filters: potential +£263Kpcm for the “colour + type” facet (UK):

          What’s more, when we extended our forecast to include other facet combinations, we calculated an additional revenue opportunity of up to +£207K/pcm (before filtering out combinations with no products offering).

          Step 5: Optimize your facet URLs

          Optimize your new facet category URLs to establish relevancy for your selected search terms. The key on-page elements to focus on include:

          • URL

          • Page title

          • Breadcrumb anchor texts

          • H tags

          • Content snippets (e.g. introductory text and FAQ copy)

          • Image ALT texts

          • Product names

          • Link out to similar facet category pages (i.e. via a “You May Also Like” feature box)

          David’s Bridal is a good example of a retailer that has done this well. Looking back at the ‘Long Sleeve Wedding Dress’ Product Listing Page, we can see that they’ve curated unique content and followed fundamental optimization tactics on the landing page in a way that feels helpful to the user.

          URL: davidsbridal.com/long-sleeve-wedding-dresses

          Page Title: Long Sleeve Wedding Dresses & Gowns | David’s Bridal

          Meta Description: Do you dream of wearing a long sleeve wedding dress on your big day? Shop David’s Bridal wide variety of wedding gowns with sleeves in lace & other designs!

          6. Provide accessibility and build page authority

          Once you’ve opened up your new facet Product Listing Pages, you need to begin cultivating link equity towards them. This will ensure that they don’t exist as orphan URLs with no PageRank:

          1. Ensure they’re referenced in your product XML sitemap.

          2. If you have one feature per facet URL, then add them to your faceted navigation across CLP and Product Listing Page pages.

          3. If you have two or more features per facet URL, then create a “Popular Searches” or “Related Searches” option within your CLPs.

          4. Utilize your mega menu to showcase your new category landing pages. This will not only allow you to direct a large proportion of link equity, but it will also secure the highest click-through rate amongst your visitors.

          5. Integrate your editorial strategy by creating engaging content with in-copy links. Think about how you can use descriptive long-tail anchor text about the Product Listing Page you want to link to rather than relying on “click here” or “see more”.

          6. Connect to them via href links so you’re not solely relying on links from the main navigation or content hyperlinks. As this is difficult to do at scale, it can be done through modules such as “related categories”, “other subcategories”, “related products”, etc.

          7. Devise strategic outreach campaigns that will secure quality, external backlinks to them.

          Implementing this holistic and robust strategy will help you to secure exponential growth from your new commercial landing pages.

          Conclusion

          There is a great deal of organic opportunity that exists within your faceted navigation if you begin to leverage mid- and long-tail search terms.

          Seek out the opportunity from extended keyword research and competitor analysis before deciding which variants fulfill consumer demands and deliver optimal organic sessions and onsite conversions. Configure a single faceted URL for each opportunity and open them up for crawl and indexation. Ensure PageRank is distributed to them (both internally and externally) and develop your landing page content in line with quality optimization practices. This approach will help you to avoid having crawl inefficiencies, over indexation, cannibalization, or having thin doorway pages. In turn, your website will be better suited to attract highly-targeted users and guide them down the purchase funnel.

          Maximizing UX and reducing reliance on other marketing channels means that your faceted navigation can truly deliver organic ROI. We have seen this work for our clients.

          MozCon Virtual 2021 Interview Series: Dr. Pete Meyers

          Resident Moz search scientist Dr. Pete Meyers returns to the MozCon stage this year, and we’re so excited for his presentation: Rule Your Rivals: From Data to Action. In our last interview before the show, we talked with Dr. Pete about 2020, the trends he’s seeing in the SERPs, and what makes competitive analysis effective. 

          Read the full interview below, and don’t forget to grab your ticket to see Dr. Pete and our other amazing speakers at MozCon Virtual 2021 (ticket sales end Friday, July 9!): 

          Secure your seat

          An image of ring master roger under the big top tent with Dr. Pete's headshot in the center.

          Question: 2020 was quite a year, how was this year for you? Did you have any favorite projects?

          Dr. Pete: Honestly, there were a lot of days this past year when it felt like just staying alive and sane were our main project (and I’m not sure I completed the sane part). Here at Moz, the Product team and I have been hard at work on an upcoming suite of competitive analysis tools, and I’m excited to finally get the first part of that out to the world. We should have news at MozCon and a limited beta going out in the next couple of months.

          Question: What key trends are you noticing in the SERP right now? What should brands pay attention to when competing for features?

          Dr. Pete: It’s been a challenging year in SEO, as the volatility of the SERPs in many ways matches the volatility of the world. It’s been a big year for e-commerce and a bad year for brick-and-mortar, for obvious reasons, and as we return to a new normal, we really need to stay on top of things and monitor how changing consumer behavior is impacting SERPs, both because Google is changing to adapt and because search behavior itself is changing. SERP features are becoming more and more niche, and I think it’s really important to know your own industry and SERP space. There are a lot of features now that might only impact 1% of us, but for that 1% the impact is massive. There’s no one-sized-fits-all advice in 2021.

          Question: How do you think the SERPs will evolve over the next year?

          Dr. Pete: In just the past month, we’ve had two Core Updates (which is unprecedented) and the beginning of the Core Web Vitals (CWV) ranking updates. While I believe that CWV as a ranking factor is pretty low-volume right now, Google is clearly signaling to us that they want fast, user-friendly sites, and that’s something that all of us should be working toward anyway, regardless of our SEO. We need to be aware of the entire searcher experience and the SERPs as a journey, not a static collection of rankings and features.

          Question: You’ll be talking about how to turn data into competitive insights at MozCon. What inspired you to tackle this topic in 2021?

          Dr. Pete: I’ve actually been working on this particular project for at least four years, and generally questioning how we do competitive analysis and how we can improve that process. One thing the pandemic really drove home is that the “competition” isn’t a single or static set of companies — our competitive landscape is constantly changing. So, the idea of being able to re-evaluate that landscape and not just treat it as a one-and-done report took on new life in 2021.

          Question: What are the biggest challenges brands face when conducting competitive analysis?

          Dr. Pete: First, it’s incredibly time-consuming. Second, what you end up with after a ton of work is usually a giant spreadsheet of keywords or link prospects that’s ultimately not very actionable. No one is going to take a competitive analysis with tens of thousands of keywords and write a thousand unique, well-researched pieces of content. So, I think the big challenges are making the process both easier and more focused.

          Question: What’s your #1 tip for conducting effective competitive analysis?

          Dr. Pete: Don’t assume you know who your competition is or that they’re just one set of businesses. Your online/SERP competitors may look very different from your brick-and-mortar competitors, and the competition is always evolving. At the same time, you might have content competitors and product competitors and even partner-competitors, and those groups might not overlap much or require the same strategies to compete with.

          Question: What are the key takeaways you want viewers to walk away with?

          Dr. Pete: I hope people walk away with a better sense of how to evaluate their competition and turn that analysis into an actionable content strategy that considers not just keywords, but their target competitors’ content and their own historical content. While I’m going to be teasing some of our upcoming product features, I’ll also be demonstrating how to do some of this work with Google (including some tips and tricks with advanced search operators).

          Question: Who in the MozCon line up are you most excited to watch this year? Anything else you are looking forward to?

          Dr. Pete: I’m really behind where I want to be on Natural Language Processing (NLP) work, so I’m excited to see Miracle Inameti-Archibong’s talk. I’ve been a big fan of some of Miracle’s work over the past year or two. Excited to see Jackie Chu speak, too, and hear more about her role at Uber. I always value hearing from in-house SEOs at big brands, since so many of my own contacts are agency folks. Always eager to see my returning favorites, too, like Wil Reynolds. Of course, I’m probably most excited to watch my boss, Tom Capper, because he’s brilliant and very handsome and did not at all make me say that.

          A Statement in Support of Indigenous Peoples in This Time of Grief

          We express solidarity with the Indigenous communities of this continent grieving their precious lost children. What occurred at the boarding and residential schools of Canada and the US is cruel beyond words. We call for the rights, needs, requests, and words of Indigenous Peoples in their own voices to be foregrounded in all areas relating to cultural genocide.

          At Moz, we have been working for the past year with the Tribes, Nations, and Bands in the traditional homelands in which our offices are located to draft an approved Statement of Land Acknowledgement, but we still have so much more to learn. We recommend the following resources to our community for further learning in support of Indigenous Peoples.

          Learn

          The first step toward change is education. We’ve compiled resources you can use to learn more about these tragedies:

          • Learn about what happened at the residential and boarding schools.

          • Listen to survivors. Indigenous survivors and advocates have spent decades telling the world of these atrocities. Take the time to learn their histories and share them far and wide.

          • Read Indigenous journalism. Consider making publications like Indian Country Today, Windspeaker, and the Indigenous Environmental Network part of your regular news-reading schedule.

          • Learn how to be an ally to Indigenous communities. Dr. Lynn Gehl shares an Ally Bill of Responsibilities here, while Amnesty International offers a helpful resource here.

          Honor

          Many non-Indigenous people live on stolen land. Take the time to learn about and support the Indigenous communities near you.

          Act

          All of us have the power to make a difference. Here are actions you can take today to express solidarity with Indigenous communities.

          • Advocate for transparency in education. Inaccuracies and historical omissions are par for the course when it comes to teaching kids about North America’s violent colonial history. Teaching children the truth about history, even the ugly parts, is one way to halt the cycle of harm.

          • Contact your representatives. If you’re in the US, this government site will help you connect with your local elected officials. For Canada, see the On Canada Project here. If you are a non-Indigenous resident, let officials know you support the specific requests and demands of Indigenous Peoples, as expressed in their own voices.

          • Amplify Indigenous voices. The SEO community is highly active on social media. Consider following Indigenous neighbors on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, learning respectfully from their accounts, and sharing their content from your own accounts.

          A Step-by-Step Strategy for B2B Pillar Pages

          B2B companies are really focused on the middle of the sales funnel. They’ve got great e-books, lots of good data published, but they tend to neglect the top-of-the-funnel content. That type of content is actually crucial to B2B success, as it allows your potential customers to learn more about your brand. 

          A great way for B2B companies to fill this gap is by creating pillar pages. To help get you started, in today’s Whiteboard Friday, guest host Carly Schoonhoven of Obility walks you through a simple strategy for employing pillar pages on your website. Enjoy! 

          Photo of the whiteboard walking through a pillar page strategy.
          Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

          Video Transcription

          Hello and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Carly Schoonhoven, and I’m a senior SEO manager here at Obility. We’re a digital marketing agency focused on B2B in beautiful Portland, Oregon.

          Now one of the biggest struggles I find that B2B companies have, when working on a content strategy, is how to create content that’s able to effectively rank for those top-of-funnel, higher search volume, more conversational queries. A lot of times B2B companies are really focused on mid-funnel. They’ve got great e-books, lots of good data content, but they tend to neglect the top-of-the-funnel content.

          However, that type of content is so important because it allows for your potential customers to perform self-discovery and really learn more about your brand, learn more about the industry you’re in before they’re ready to take a more meaningful step, like filling out a form or requesting a demo. So one great content strategy for a B2B company is creating a pillar page.

          What are pillar pages? 

          Pillar pages, you might have heard them referred to as hub and spoke content or umbrella content, but whatever you want to call it, it’s essentially the same thing. So the idea is that you start with your pillar page. So this is one large piece of content that’s really optimized for one very broad topic that’s really relevant to your business.

          Then it internally links out to your cluster pages, which are targeted at those longer tail, secondary keywords and really well-optimized to answer the questions that your customers may have. It’s so important that you’re linking back from the cluster pages to the pillar page and from the pillar page out to your clusters.

          Again, this has multiple benefits. One that your customers are able to navigate to this content and get their questions answered themselves. Then, at the same time, it’s great for SEO because it’s so easy for Google to tell what this content is about since it’s all internally linked to each other and it’s all focused on one specific topic. So if this sounds like something for you, I’m going to walk you through step by step how to go about creating a pillar content strategy.

          1. Pick a topic

          So Step 1, of course, is you have to pick a topic. So there are a couple things you want to keep in mind when you’re doing this, one of which is that you want it to be broad but not too broad. So obviously it has to be somewhat broad because you need to be able to find enough secondary keywords that also have search volume that it’s worth your time putting the work in.

          But if it’s too broad, it’s going to be really difficult to create one piece of content that covers everything you need to cover in this content. So, for example, a pillar page about SEO as a whole, that might be a little bit too broad. There’s a lot of stuff you’re going to have to cover, and it’s going to be really difficult to rank for a lot of those keywords. But something like SEO content strategy, that’s a little bit more focused, there’s still a lot of potential there.

          You can talk about ideating content for B2B. You can talk about on-site optimization. So something that is definitely broad, has lots of keywords, but not so broad you’re biting off more than you can chew. 

          2. Keyword research

          So speaking of keywords, obviously you have to do keyword research. This is SEO.

          It’s so important. So you can start with that one topic, but then you really need to expand your list of keywords to find all of those secondary keywords that you want to include. Moz’s Keyword Explorer is a great tool for this because you’re able to put in your topic and then it will generate all of those related keywords for you, along with things like search volume and keyword difficulty. I also love that you can filter down to just the keywords that are questions, because again it’s so important to make sure that you’re answering your potential customers’ questions in your content. 

          3. Look at your existing content

          So you’ve got your list, you’ve got your keywords, but don’t forget to look at your existing content as well. So you’re going to be putting a lot of work in. Find ways you can save yourself time. Maybe you’ll have some content buried in your blog or buried in your resource section that you can repurpose and include as part of this strategy. Definitely make sure you’re not neglecting content that you already have. 

          4. Plan URL structure

          Up next, planning your structure. So you’re going to be creating a great new piece of content. You need to know where you’re going to put it. You can just link to it in your top navigation, or maybe you just want to feature it on your resources section. But one thing to keep in mind is that you want to make sure that your cluster pages are in a subfolder of your pillar page.

          5. Start writing (clusters first)

          All right, Step 5, start writing. You actually get to start putting these pieces together. So ultimately, what do you want them to look like? Now ideally, for your main pillar page, what you want is to have sort of just an introductory section talking about the topic area as a whole, but really this page serves as that hub that links out to all of your other secondary pages.

          So you want to make it really easy to navigate. You want to make sure you’re including lots of mid-funnel CTAs within that content, because ultimately this is that hub piece of content where everyone is going to navigate to from those cluster pages. So start with your intro and then have a nice table of contents and then a little header for each of your cluster pages with a little bit of a summary, but then that ultimately links out to those cluster pages so that someone can visit that page if they really want to learn more and get more in depth into that topic.

          As far as your cluster pages, this is where you really want to get in depth, spend a lot of time putting your content together and make sure you’re covering it. I think that the question-and-answer format is a really good approach for this type of content because it really helps you optimize for featured snippets or for the people also ask feature. So you want to make sure that you’re putting your question in the header, and then summarize the answer to that question in about 40 to 50 words if you’re optimizing for a snippet.

          6. Promotion

          All right. Number 6 is promotion. So you’ve created your content. You’ve figured out where to put it. You’ve published it. You did all of this work. You want to make sure people see it.

          So promote it internally. Make sure you’re sharing it on your social media. Share it with your team. But then also flex your link building skills and reach out to anyone in your industry who you think would benefit from this content or be willing to share it as well. 

          7. Measure everything

          Number 7 is measure. So, of course, you put all this work in and you want to see how does it do. Did it perform well?

          So you have your list of keywords, so use Moz to track your keyword rankings. Take a look to see if there are new keywords you weren’t expecting to rank for. Obviously, keywords are super important. Also, look at Google Analytics. Check out your landing page report. Are you getting organic traffic? Are people actually converting?

          See what you can learn from that, if you need to make tweaks, swap out your CTAs. Just make sure you’re measuring and you don’t let this content go to waste. You’re bringing in this new traffic. Make sure you’re converting those people. 

          8. Repeat

          Step 8, repeat. So once you have the process down, do it again. Find other topics that are really relevant to your industry you can create a pillar page about.

          When you do, tell me about it. I really hope that this was helpful for you, and I hope you go out there and create some pillar content. So thank you so much.

          Video transcription by Speechpad.com

           Tweet your questions and comments about pillar pages using #MozBlog!

          MozCon Virtual 2021 Interview Series: Dana DiTomaso

          Dana DiTomaso is the founder and president of Kick Point, a Canadian-based digital marketing agency. She is well known for her ingenious and innovative presentations on tracking and analytics, as well as other growth marketing strategies. She’s presented at SMX, Local Search Summit, and Engage, and we’re thrilled to welcome her back to this year’s MozCon Virtual where she’ll discuss modern web development that puts SEO first. Check out what she has to share ahead of this year’s show!

          Secure your seat

          Question: 2020 was quite the year, what were you up to this past year? Any surprises or favorite projects you worked on?

          Dana: Like many people I actually ended up moving! I now live on Vancouver Island and I can practically see the USA from my house — not that I’ve been able to visit. I also completed my first course, hopefully of many, for LinkedIn Learning on the topic of technical SEO. My next course is already in progress and will be covering how to transition from Google Analytics Universal to GA4, and that should be out in the fall.

          At Kick Point, we grew over the past year and we’re now a team of 12! Like a lot of agencies, we did see some good come out of an otherwise pretty awful time for many, we’re very fortunate.

          Q: What is the biggest shift you’ve seen in the SEO industry over the past year? How does that impact your work at Kick Point, if at all?

          D: The biggest change this year was the rollout of Core Web Vitals, which as I write this, is only just happening now. I am extremely curious to see how it impacts SEO over the remainder of 2021. I don’t want to say too much more in case it ages badly!

          Q: Last year, you discussed how to use a discovery process to turn red flags to green lights. Will we see any of the same themes come through in your presentation this year? How so?

          D: Absolutely! This year is really a companion piece to last year. Last year I covered discovery for marketing projects, and this year I’m covering discovery for website projects. These discovery processes have made such incredible changes at Kick Point in terms of how we work with new clients — it’s really been amazing. I hope that people who listen to my talk are able to take away some of the lessons that we’ve learned and apply them to their own processes.

          Q: In your MozCon talk, you’ll be discussing how to build a website with a search-first mindset. What inspired you to discuss this topic at MozCon 2021?

          D: I think it’s a topic that isn’t covered enough. We unfortunately often still see a real divide between the developer and SEO worlds and I’m hoping that we can work towards bridging that. Particularly with the advent of Core Web Vitals, these two teams need to work together more than ever before.

          Additionally, this talk is based on a lot of our own learnings in terms of better ways to run website projects. Since we have adopted this process, website projects are just more fun — less stress, on time, on budget, all those things that we all want in a website project but seem impossible to achieve. I’m not saying this will magically fix everything but it’ll definitely put you on a happier path.

          Q: What are some of the challenges SEOs face in the web development process?

          D: Being taken seriously! I’ve been working in this field for 21 years now and I can’t even tell you the number of times that I’ve been on a call with a developer or development team discussing SEO recommendations and just being completely dismissed — that these recommendations aren’t necessary, that we’re wrong, or that the developer knows better. And it’s an incredibly frustrating place to be in. I’m sure other SEOs reading this have had similar experiences.

          Q: Why is it important for SEO to be at the forefront when it comes to website development? How has the relationship changed over the years?

          D: Because it’s so much easier and cheaper to get SEO recommendations added in at the beginning instead of trying to shove things in later after the site is done. I think that developers are more aware of SEO now but there is still a lot of mistrust. I think it’s important to set the tone that you aren’t there to throw the developer under the bus — they aren’t an SEO expert, and shouldn’t be expected to learn all this specific SEO stuff. Showing that you’re there to help right from the start can really help that relationship thrive.

          Q: What’s your #1 tip for ensuring that SEO gets a seat at the table in a website rebrand?

          D: You need to start with education. Either the leadership team that you’re working with doesn’t understand the power of SEO or they may have a really outdated understanding of what SEO is and what it can do. Tom Critchlow has an excellent article that he recently published on how to convince executives to care about SEO and I’d say that is required reading.

          Q: What are the key takeaways you want the audience to walk away with?

          D: I want people to understand that there is a space between waterfall and agile when it comes to website development processes. I hope that people will enjoy our blueprint process and it’ll help them make better website plans. Finally, I’m really excited to show off the keyword research presentation idea that I got from Rebekah Baggs and Chris Corak — it’s so good!

          Q: Who in the MozCon lineup are you most excited to watch this year? Anything else you are looking forward to?

          D: The talks by Dr. Pete, Areej AbuAli, and Britney Muller all look great! And of course I’ll be watching Brie Anderson’s talk since GA4 is very close to my heart. I’m also really looking forward to hopefully having an in-person MozCon next year! There is really nothing that can replace the experience of speaking to a live audience.

          A big thank you to Dana for her time! To learn more about Dana’s upcoming presentation, see details on our other speakers, and to purchase your ticket, make sure you click the link below!

          How to Optimize for Your Own Branded Search

          Have you googled yourself or your company recently?

          I bet you have, but this doesn’t mean you have a branded search optimization strategy.

          Brand-driven search is so much more than URLs you see ranking for your brand name. It’s an ongoing process that will result in higher conversions and more predictable buying journeys.

          Let’s start from the beginning.

          What is branded search?

          A branded (also referred to as brand-driven) search query is one that contains your brand or product name. Branded search includes search queries that include personal, brand-driven words, like your CEO or writers’ names.

          Why should your branded search be your marketing priority?

          There seems to be an obvious answer to this question. After all, great SEO starts with your brand, so branded SEO research should be any company’s priority. Yet, it’s quite unbelievable how many brands completely ignore search queries.

          Branded search is crucial for several important reasons:

          • Brand-driven search is usually high-intent: People who type your brand name in the search box want to either go straight to your site or research you before making a purchase.

          • Branded search queries show which issues your current or future customers may be experiencing with your site or product.

          • Brand-driven search is important to analyze in order to understand the online sentiment around your (and competing) brand.

          • Finally (and obviously), any of those branded SERPs may influence buying decisions, which make them part of your sales funnel.

          Like a branded hashtag, your branded SERPs don’t belong to you, and you can’t really control what people see there, unless you spend some time and effort optimizing for your own branded search.

          How to research your branded search queries

          Start with your immediate branded Google suggestions

          What do people see when they just start typing your brand name into the search box?

          Brand-driven Google suggestions should be your top priority for two important reasons:

          • Google suggestions show what people search most as far as your brand is concerned. They’ve historically relied on the search frequency data, so the more people search for a particular phrase, the higher that phrase shows up in Google suggestions.

          • Google suggestions may (and likely will) influence lots of your customers’ buying decisions. Think about someone typing your brand name in their mobile device address bar (in an effort to go directly to your site) and seeing “brand name alternatives” as a suggestion. What’s the chance that person will get curious enough to click that suggestion and discover your competitors? According to the recent study, Google searchers use one of Google’s suggestions 23% of the time. That’s almost a quarter of your customers who already know you enough to search for your name. Suddenly, you’re competing for the attention of someone who had been going directly to your site:

          Screenshot of the mobile Safari address bar.

          “This isn’t even a search box. This is Safari’s URL bar. Safari uses Google’s top suggestions, which may steer your current or future customers to competitors.”

          Basically, this means that branded Google suggestions may influence your buyers’ decisions even when they aren’t really searching for anything.

          I’m sure you’re wondering: Is there any way to change what Google shows when people are typing your brand name?

          Unfortunately, no.

          There’s no long-term way to somehow influence Google suggestions. Of course, you could try and hire an army of searchers to type some other combinations with your brand name to convince Google to include in those results. But even if it works, Google will remove that suggestion soon after you stop paying your army.

          Another way to influence your branded suggestions is to go viral with some new product, report, or news. A quickly-rising search term is often included in those suggestions.

          Yet, as soon as people stop searching for that query, the result will also be replaced with a different one.

          That being said, chances are, you’ll need to deal with branded Google suggestion results as they are.

          Types of branded Google suggestions

          It’s amazing how often brands absolutely neglect their branded search suggestions. In fact, these as-you-type results may tell you a lot about your brand’s perception as well as your buyers’ journeys:

          Screenshot of a Google search showing four types of branded search terms: competitive research, high-intent, high-intent/informational, and navigational.

          In our example, the brand’s domain ranks #1 only for four queries. All other branded suggestions are controlled by third-party domains:

          Screenshot of a Google search for Buzzsumo showing the brand's domain ranking number 1 for only four terms.

          Use keyword research tools

          Your brand name is your most important keyword. You want people to search more for your brand as that helps you evaluate your marketing efforts and measure brand awareness. But you also want to make sure that your branded search results push those searchers further down your sales funnel instead of scaring them away for good.

          Moz’s Keyword Explorer is perfect for that:

          • It will pull a large variety of your branded search queries.

          • It will show you the search volume for each query containing your brand name.

          • It offers a few cool filters allowing you to play with your lists. For example, you can filter your search queries to questions or group them by lexical similarity.

          Screenshot of a Moz Pro keyword suggestion list for buzzsumo.

          Keep an eye on branded questions

          Questions often get additional visibility in organic search because they often trigger featured snippets. Additionally, Google has a separate section for questions within search result pages called “People Also Ask”.

          I like using questions as subheads of whatever content I’m working on. When phrased as questions, subheadings seem to draw readers in deeper into the page.

          The three useful sources of branded keyword inspiration include:

          1. Moz Keyword Explorer

          Moz Keyword Explorer offers you an easy way to filter keyword lists by questions:

          Screenshot of Moz Pro keyword explorer list for buzzsumo.

          2. Google’s “People Also Ask”

          Simply searching Google can give you some question inspiration. Keep an eye on those “People Also Ask” boxes and keep a record of questions that need your attention there. It’s also your goal to rank your answer for each one of those:

          Screenshot of a People Also Ask suggestion box for the search query

          For larger brands with hundreds of branded search queries and questions, it would be easier to use tools like IMN’s Content Optimization tool that collects People Also Ask results for your most important queries (Disclaimer: This is the company I work for).

          If you feel like playing some more, People Also Ask boxes may also give you some idea as to what Google considers relevant, as Google will show different follow-up questions based on a brand-driven question you click:

          Screenshot of a People Also Ask suggestion box for the search query

          3. Text Optimizer

          Finally, my go-to tool for just about any SEO task, Text Optimizer offers a separate section for questions that helps you better understand searching patterns of your audience:

          Screenshot of a Text Optimizer search for Buzzsumo.

          Take note of these questions to include into your content marketing plan.

          Group your keywords

          Like with any keyword lists, yours will have several variants of one and the same idea, worded a little differently. This will be especially true for larger brands in broad niches that are searched a lot.

          This is where Moz’s Keyword Explorer will turn helpful again. Take a look at your Google suggestion results and use keyword modifiers from there to group your list by a common word:

          Screenshot of Moz Pro keyword explorer list for buzzsumo.

          [These are essentially keyword phrases to use within a single article.]

          You can also use Moz’s keyword grouping feature to discover more groups to focus on:

          Screenshot of Moz Pro keyword explorer list for buzzsumo.

          Finally, for every keyword you choose to work with, you can also run a SERP analysis to see high-ranking results as well as Google’s search elements:

          Screenshot of Moz Pro SERP analysis for Buzzsumo.

          How to optimize for your branded search

          Identify where you currently stand

          I’m an SEO, and any of my digital marketing strategies starts with ranking analysis. For this, Moz comes with a powerful rank tracking solution.

          The tool I’m currently using is called SE Ranking, because I like how they save a cached snapshot of each monitored SERP every day. For branded search monitoring where I try and rank more than my own website for each query (more on that below), this close-up view of each SERP (and all saved records) is exactly what I need:

          Screenshot of SE Ranking dashboard.

          Group your branded search query groups by intent and further action

          Above I mentioned that I group branded keywords by a common modifier or close semantic meaning, so my plan of action involves those groups rather than an individual query.

          This makes the work much more doable because I usually have to deal with no more than 20 branded keyword groups instead of hundreds of individual search queries.

          When making my plan, I always note:

          • Search intent

          • Further action, which largely relies on where my site currently ranks for each one

          Your possible action item for each of identified branded keyword groups may be:

          As you may know, I love using spreadsheets for just about anything because they make data so easy to organize, and can even be turned into a schedule, if need be.

          Screenshot of an example keyword group spreadsheet.

          I break [cost] and [price] into different groups because the search volume is so high for both, they each deserve an individual marketing plan.

          Go above and beyond

          When it comes to branded search, the more of each SERP you control, the better your odds are at winning those brand-aware searchers.

          Besides, branded SERPs (just like any other SERP out there) are more than organic links. They often include videos, images, “People Also Ask” results, and more. It’s worth noting all those additional search elements in your spreadsheet as well:

          So optimizing your own site for each of these keyword groups may not be enough. To incur your brand’s visibility throughout branded SERPs, you may need to:

          • Create and optimize videos (as well as host them in more places, other than Youtube).

          • Create and optimize images (as well as host them all over available channels, including Instagram, Pinterest, etc.)

          • Create and publicize more diverse assets using content re-packaging

          • Maintain more long-form, content-based channels, including Medium and LinkedIn, etc.

          • Set up mini sites targeting some of your most popular branded queries (including coupons, reviews, etc.). Namify is a great tool to come up with cool domain names to register:

          Screenshot of Namify dashboard.

          It’s a good idea to note additional assets to be created in your spreadsheet as well:

          Screenshot of an example keyword group spreadsheet.

          On top of that, it’s always a good idea to optimize for Google’s rich snippets to let your brand-owned search snippets stand out in search. Consider adding one of the following schema markup types to your brand-oriented content assets:

          • FAQ schema for just about any page that answers more than two questions (this is where your question research will turn useful)

          • HowTo for instructions

          • Video schema if you have a video embedded

          You also do want other departments of your company to be aware of some or many of those branded search queries. For example, navigational search queries may be a signal of some serious usability issues to be fixed, and some product-related queries may help you identify some product flaws to work on:

          Screenshot of an example keyword group spreadsheet.

          Interlink and monitor

          Obviously, you still need links to rank all of your assets on top of branded SERPs, so it’s important to interlink your assets effectively, especially if you’re using more than your website to optimize for branded search.

          • Use your website power to link to your third-party assets. This is the easiest to do. You can use your About page as well as your blog to send links to your other columns and channels to rank those higher.

          • Don’t forget to link from video descriptions back to your site.

          • Link all your channels together listing all your additional columns and accounts wherever possible..

          Having to deal with so many channels and assets can be exhausting, but it is doable if you set up your monitoring routine right:

          • Again, use a position monitoring platform to keep an eye on your positions.

          • Use tools like LinkChecker to keep an eye on all the links and make sure you haven’t lost any.

          • Keep an eye on your branded search traffic. Google Search Console is a free and easy way to do that. All you need is to limit your queries to your brand name and then compare that to the previous period to see if you are on the right track:

          Screenshot of a Google Search Console dashboard.

          If Google is not the only search engine you’re interested in (for example, if you target Russian and Chinese markets), you can use Finteza, which gives aggregate traffic data from all search engines:

          Screenshot of a dashboard within the Finteza tool.

          Conclusion

          Branding comes with many benefits, including higher conversions and revenue. But it also comes with one challenge not many brands are prepared for: a fast-growing branded search. As more and more people are researching your brand online, you need to keep improving your branded search optimization strategy.

          As such, optimizing for your branded search is an on-going effort (since we all hope your brand will keep growing), but hopefully the steps above will help clearly define and implement it.

          Crie um site como este com o WordPress.com
          Comece agora