2015 mnsearch summit - cyrus shepard - optimizing for humans – how we do seo at moz
TRANSCRIPT
Optimizing for Humans
Cyrus Shepard
Actual Moz employees.
Most are harmless.
How we do SEO at Moz
What sorcery is this?
600% Growth in 5 years
• Secrets? • Tricks? • Magic Internet Money?
The myth of advanced SEO
Challenge: Rank #1 “Best Restaurant in St. Paul”
Easy!
Easy(?)
I’m a friggin’ SEO expert!
I write smarty-pants blog posts!
Let’s SEO the S%!T
out of this!
Optimized Title Tag <title>Best Restaurant in St. Paul – Bob’s Seafood</title>
Optimized Title Tag <title>Best Restaurant in St. Paul – Bob’s Seafood</title>
Optimize TF-IDF
Optimized Title Tag <title>Best Restaurant in St. Paul – Bob’s Seafood</title>
Optimize TF-IDF
Synonyms & Variants
Optimized Title Tag <title>Best Restaurant in St. Paul – Bob’s Seafood</title>
Optimize TF-IDF
Synonyms & Variants
Page Segmentation
Optimized Title Tag <title>Best Restaurant in St. Paul – Bob’s Seafood</title>
Optimize TF-IDF
Synonyms & Variants
Page Segmentation
Semantic Distance
Optimized Title Tag <title>Best Restaurant in St. Paul – Bob’s Seafood</title>
Optimize TF-IDF
Synonyms & Variants
Page Segmentation
Semantic Distance
Page Segmentation
Co-occurrence Optimization
Optimized Title Tag <title>Best Restaurant in St. Paul – Bob’s Seafood</title>
Optimize TF-IDF
Synonyms & Variants
Page Segmentation
Semantic Distance
Page Segmentation
Co-occurrence Optimization
Entity Salience
Optimized Title Tag <title>Best Restaurant in St. Paul – Bob’s Seafood</title>
Optimize TF-IDF
Synonyms & Variants
Page Segmentation
Semantic Distance
Page Segmentation
Co-occurrence Optimization
Entity Salience
Anchor Text
+100 other things
this might just work…
Advanced SEO got us to page 1
…but failed to get us here
Nailed it!
The page that best matches user intent often wins.
Us
Chasing the Algorithm
Us
Chasing the User
Us
Chasing the User
Us
The User as a Ranking Signal
7. Examples of Human Optimized SEO
1. Formatting: Robot vs. Human
We still write like this
…but only 1 in 5 read every word
hBp://dejanseo.com.au/web-‐content/
Whiteboard Fridays once upon a time
We added transcripts
What human likes to read this?
Added rich formatting
• Headers • Images • Scanable
Engagement improved!
2. Old and forgotten content
Big launch, but then…
declining traffic
Half-life of content is only a few
months
Half-life of content is only a few
months
2005 2015
Constantly (re)Market Your Best Content
hBps://moz.com/beginners-‐guide-‐to-‐seo
Refresh every 1-2 years
2005 2015
hBps://moz.com/search-‐ranking-‐factors
Small, regular updates add up to big results
400% increase when we updated an evergreen blog post
hBps://moz.com/blog/technical-‐site-‐audit-‐for-‐2015
3. Failed: Big Content Launches
You worked for 9 months on this, and only earned 2 lousy links!
Big Content!
What if I told you…
You could guarantee success by not launching big content?
Launch in smaller chunks
Blog Posts • Reports • Graphics • Press Release • Whitepapers
Each section is deep-linked
301
301
301
301
Combine successful smaller pieces into canonical resource
4. The limits keyword research
Limited keyword data only captures a fraction
of your traffic
One page Many answers
Keywords the robots told us about
How humans are unpredictably searching!
SEO Success: Provide users with satisfying
answers to questions they haven’t asked yet.
“questions they haven’t asked yet?”
Huh?
Questions
hBp://www.internetlivestats.com/google-‐search-‐staRsRcs/
Users have multiple questions
One of Moz’s most successful pages
Questions the robots told us about
Questions our humans haven’t asked yet!
Primary Topic
Related Topic
Related Topic
Related Topic
Secondary Related Topics
Secondary Related Topics
Secondary Related Topics
hBp://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-‐descripRon
Don’t forget structure!
5. SEO Tunnel Vision
The Link Builder’s Dilemma:
Us
Build Links
Build Eyeballs
The Link Builder’s Dilemma:
Us
Build Links
Build Eyeballs
more eyeballs!
RSS
Email Subscription
Newsletters
Social Media
Promoted Social
Webinars
Personal Networks
Content Discovery Networks
hBp://moz.com/blog/maximize-‐roi-‐via-‐content-‐distribuRon-‐networks
• Taboola • Outbrain • Gravity • Zemanta • ZergNet • Adblade • More here
6. Doing things for “SEO” Sucks
% of Sites HTTPS
August, 2014: Google announces HTTPS as
a ranking signal
HTTPS
hBps://moz.com/blog/the-‐colossus-‐update-‐waking-‐the-‐giant
Ranking Signal?
~0.04 Correlation
Could be the “tie-breaker” Google claims
HTTPS “Penalty”?
Browser Warnings
hBps://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-‐security/marking-‐hBp-‐as-‐non-‐secure
Here’s what sucks: Loss of referral data
HTTPS doesn’t pass referral data to non-secure sites
Web spammers know it:
Lots of spam in the hope of scoring links + traffic
<meta name="referrer" content="origin" />
hBp://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/referrer-‐policy/
To the rescue! Meta Referrer Tag
To the rescue! Meta Referrer Tag
<meta name="referrer" content="origin" />
hBp://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/referrer-‐policy/
Meta Referrer Tag
hBp://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/referrer-‐policy/
Value can be: • no-referrer • no-referrer-when-downgrade • origin • origin-when-cross-origin • unsafe-url
Meta Referrer Tag
<meta name="referrer" content="origin" />
hBp://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/referrer-‐policy/
7. The Future of SEO
We asked 200+ top SEOs:
”What ranking factors will
change the most in Google’s algorithm over the next 12
months?”
# 3 Usage data (CTR, dwell time, etc.)
hBp://moz.com/blog/seo-‐saRsfacRon
# 2 Analysis of a site/page's perceived value to users
Perceived Value
• Design • Navigation • Site Speed
• Trust • Authority • Accuracy
# 1…
# 1 Mobile friendliness – 91.2%
Trust us, we’re experts!
