Month: June 2019

Categories
SEO

Getting Ready: SEO During an Economic Slump

In 2008, we saw the stock market crash, suffering one of the largest points losses in history – and holding the record for the largest drop until 2018. For many, starting a business during this time ended up being a mistake, but in the case of SEO and direct marketing, economic downturns make it possible to thrive.

If you’re paying attention to the economics experts, it’s time for a rather significant financial plunge – and it’s impossible at this point, to determine whether it will send us into a recession, or if it’ll just be a momentary slow down that leaves as quickly as it came in. The only thing we know for sure is that eventually, our economy will decline – because it always does. And it will rebound, eventually, because it does that, too.

Why Does SEO Thrive When the Economy is Down?

Put simply, when there’s less money available to invest in your business, you want the money you do have to invest to work harder for you, going further than before. That means cutting the fat and focusing solely on the channels you know are working. When profits are down, you don’t focus on the long term – you focus on generating as many leads and sales as you possibly can, to keep your business in survival mode until the economy begins to climb again. And search keeps those leads and sales coming in, even if it’s not as effective as it is when combined with branding efforts and a long term strategy.

Preparing for SEO During Economic Downturns

Whether you’re working in-house or as an agency, there are things you must do to prepare for any economic slump. Not taking the time to get ready could mean that you’ll get cut, along with the rest of the marketing budget. When the economy starts going bad, the key to keeping all your decision-makers happy with their search marketing efforts is communicating the value you offer, along with effective campaign tracking.

Step one is to make sure that everyone involved is up-to-date on how the campaign is doing. If you’re not currently aware of customer lifetime value, invest in determining that number. Turn to attribution modeling if you haven’t already.

As an SEO expert, you’re only as value as the decision-makers perceive you to be, and ultimately, you’re aiming to make yourself irreplaceable. How do you do this? Communicate your value early, and often, celebrating all wins. Alert decision-makers to the fact that someone offers to come in and do your job cheaper, the results you achieve will more than make up for the additional costs they incur as a result of your employment.

To do this, you must be on the same wave-length with all the decision-makers, and that makes you must agree on what the results are.

Focus on Goal Setting

With a clear definition of what the results are, it’s easier to set your smart goals for what the results will be. Setting the smart goals allows you to become irreplaceable. Setting realistic goals that the decision-makers agree with set you up for long-term success. Get the agreement in writing or via email. If there’s an unrealistic goal request, suggest that it becomes a “stretch goal” and set something that’s more realistic so you’re not pressured into something that’s impossible to deliver.

No Guarantees

Even if you do not hit a goal, you can salvage the relationship by communicating why you didn’t hit the goal and what you are changing in the future. When marketing budgets are being cut because the economy is down, having stated goals with numbers to support them can save your job.

The truth is that the economy will go south. It could happen tomorrow, next quarter, or at some point within the next two years.

But, because the leading economic experts are suggesting it’s going to happen sooner rather than later, it means SEOs need to prepare themselves – and get ready to thrive. Why? What SEO does for a business has a direct affect on their bottom line – and when the work you do improves it, you can solidify your place as a partner to keep your income on steady ground.

But to survive the decline, preparation is necessary. Start setting goals with the decision makers. Come to an agreement on what success looks like. And do the work to serve the client well. Do these things, and you’ll make it through the slump quite well.

Categories
SEO

Audio SEO: Podcasts in Search Results

Every year, Google hosts their I/O Conference, bringing together developers from around the world to learn from Google experts, and get an early look at the latest developer projects. One of the most interesting takeaways from the 2019 I/O Conference was the revelation that Google will be (and in some cases, already is!) showing podcasts in search results.

This is one of the early results that indicates Google is now indexing podcast content and providing audio clips in search results.

Is Google Able to Transcribe Audio Content?

Yes. Google has offered a speech-to-text service as part of the Google Cloud Platform since 2017, which we’ve already seen get some upgrades. Not long ago, Android Police found changes in source code that suggested Google was transcribing some podcasts on the Google Podcasts platform.

Not only this, but Google sends automatic transcripts of voicemails on Google Pixel phones and to Google Voice numbers.

There’s also evidence of this in the search results, but with video. Google started testing suggested YouTube video clips in search results in April 2017. Starting with video makes sense for Google because of their profits. They own YouTube, which is much larger than Google Podcasts, so it was a smarter financial move to start there. It works by providing search results based on the audio portion of a video, so it stands to reason they can apply the same technology to audio files.

How Will Audio Appear in Search?

We can expect the starting points to be extensions of the Google podcast engine, including both automatic transcription and full-text and full-audio search. Both of these things are already in the works. Once you’re able to search within Google Podcasts, we can expect that to expand to general Google searches as well.

Right now, there is the question as to whether Google will return audio content or transcribed text. In some situations, it may be better to return audio clips for better matching user intent. If you’re searching for something you hear in a podcast, it makes for a much better experience to be able to hear the audio rather than having to sift through plain text to find it. The big advantage however, is to voice devices such as Google Home and Amazon Echo. Being able to return audio results fills the content gap for these smart speakers and voice devices, and bridges into full podcasts along with other non-text content.

Should I Start a Podcast?

Well, that’s entirely up to you since starting a decent podcast requires a bit more time, effort, and planning than simply grabbing a microphone and recording what you have to say. It’s true we are in the middle of a small podcast revival, and it’s reasonable to think that audio search may cause that revival to grow even more.

Before you get too excited, remember Google will always gradually release changes and test them for a few weeks – maybe even a few months. If you’re planning to start a podcast, don’t do it just because Google’s going to start including them in results. Do it to serve your audience first and foremost – because that’s how you earn brownie points with Google anyway.

If you’ve already got a podcast  and you want to make it search accessible, it’s important to make sure you’ve added it to Google Podcasts, and are entering the available metadata. If you’re not – go get started on that now – updating all the metadata you can.

All that you’ll really need to get your content transcribed is a clean audio file in a format that Google can easily process. That said, it’s important to consider how the audio content is structured, since completely free-form content may be harder for Google to parse and evaluate. Make sure your podcast theme is evident, along with the theme of each episode. Do you have a structure where a machine could separate questions from answers? Do you have concise takeaways, such as a summary at the end of each episode.

Audio SEO ultimately means we’ll need to be more deliberate and structured with our approach to audio. As Google continues to grow and evolve across devices, we need to be hyper aware of the content that best fits our audience’s needs. Is the searcher looking for video, audio, or text? Each modality is there to fit a different need and a different device or set of devices in the search landscape.

Are you excited about the potential audio SEO brings to the marketing landscape? Share your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!

Categories
SEO

How to Use SERPs to Build Your Keyword List

One of the most important, yet frustrating jobs as an SEO is to develop keyword lists for clients. There’s a lot of time and effort that goes into producing a powerful keyword list, and having a good one can be the difference between seeing the big picture, or just a small piece of it.

This is a guide to my favorite way to build keyword lists, which relies on three search engine results page (SERP) features: the “People Also Ask” box, the “People Also Search For” box, and the “related searches” found at the bottom of the SERPs.

 I’ll explain why you should use these features and how you can get your hands on all of the Google-vetted queries to create the ultimate keyword list to help your clients crush their competition.

Google Approved Search Terms

These features are the keyword gold mines because all three of them link to new SERPs for the terms that are semantically related to the original query. As such, they provide great insight into how users follow up, refine, and narrow down their searches to reveal relevant topics that could easily be overlooked.

Google has put a lot of resources into understanding and mapping how topics and searches are linked and these features are the direct result of all that research. Google is literally showing you how and what everyone is searching which is why these features are so useful.

“People Also Ask”

The “People Also Ask” box contains questions that are related to the original query, which expand to reveal answers Google has pulled from other websites.

These questions make great long tail keywords to add to your list and they are an amazing source of content inspiration. The numerous ways users express the same basic question can help you expand your topics. One piece of content could easily answer multiple questions, too.

It’s important not to fall down the rabbit hole, because while the box used to provide anywhere from one to four question and answer combinations, many of them are now infinite and can’t easily provide hundreds of options giving you an infinite number of pages to track.

Google does not always choose the questions based on actual search queries so it seems that many of the questions are the result of machine learning. This is because Google is doing its work to understand actual search queries and produce relevant searches to save users effort. It makes sense for us to be on those pages when users decide to take Google up on the offer.

Create a spreadsheet and for each of your keywords that return a “People Also Ask” box keep track of the questions that people also asked and note the result that Google sourced the answers from. You will likely find a lot of duplicates so once you remove them you can narrow down your keyword list to topically related queries to explore.

“People Also Search For”

The people also search for term isn’t new to the search engine results page but the feature did get an update in February which helped it become more useful. Now, instead of just being attached to a knowledge graph, the box also attaches itself to organic URLs and contains extra queries. You’ll get up to eight related searches  on a desktop and up to six on a mobile device. These queries are related to the URL that surfaces it. It’s Google’s way of saying that if you didn’t find what you’re looking for you can try these options instead.

This feature requires you to do a little bit more work in order to find it. You must click on an organic search result and then navigate back to the results page before it shows. Collecting these terms this way involves a lot of work and finger cramps. Fortunately for us, there is a little bit of javascript code from Carlos Canterello that helps you find all of the boxes on a certain without going back-and-forth.

Or if you are feeling link doing it yourself coming you can pull the raw HTML from the serbs and parse them Yourself using the STAT API.

You’ll want to add all of this information to your spreadsheet. You’ll end up with a ton of options, and like with the questions asked, many will be duplicates. Once you remove them, you’ll have even more long-tail keywords and inspiration to work with.

Related Searches

 The final place you can use Google to find keywords for your list is the 8 related searches that are found at the bottom of the results page. When these are clicked they become the search query of a new results page.

Manually collecting this data that could be time consuming so there are tools that will help you collect these into your spreadsheet. Like the other features, you are bound to find many duplicates that you’ll need to remove.

Evaluating the Keywords

Google will definitely offer up the best suggestions, but you want to be sure you’re only got the most relevant keywords for your project, so you’ll want to do a keyword audit.

Combine all the queries into a master list, and remove any that don’t make sense. Load them into STAT or another SEO tool of your choice to keep an eye on them for a few days so you can vet them. Organize the new queries into groups of the SERP feature where they came, so you can track which of the features makes the best suggestions, and keep the data super organized. (You’ll appreciate it later!)

Now, with your search volume information in hand, choose and remove keywords that returned no search volume. Doing so gets rid of clutter and allows you to focus efforts on queries that will bring you traffic. It’s also a good idea to remove keywords with low search volume. You’re free to choose your own definition of low, but this helps you focus on the higher value keyword phrases. You can keep them, if you want, as well.

Now that you know how to use Google to do the keyword research, it’s time to figure out the next steps, which is dependent on your SEO strategy. If you need help with any or all of it, feel free to reach out.

Categories
SEO

Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines Updated

In May 2019, Google updated the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines again, for the first time since July 2018. The new version of the guidelines added in more detailed instructions about content creator expertise and interstitial pages, and adds “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) within the Page Quality in certain areas. Quality raters are expected to follow the updated version of these guidelines over the course of their work.

What’s Changed?

The document has increased two pages, for a total of 166 pages. Though the document has grown in length, the table of contents and the majority of the guidelines are the same.

If you’re an advertiser that uses interstitial pages or ads or an app developer, you should make sure your ads don’t limit a user’s ability to get to the main content on a page.

A paragraph that explicitly mentions content creator expertise emphasizes how important it is to vet the information included in your content.

E-A-T is now part of the Page Quality section, in the explanation column of tables in sections 15 and 17.

The revisions don’t particularly alter the majority of the guidelines how quality raters evaluate websites, but they are impactful enough for Google to update the document. As such, content creators, advertisers, and marketers should be aware of the changes.

Why This Matters

The Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines are what humans use to evaluate websites and search engine results pages. Though they do not have a direct effect on rankings, the judgements they make do influence improvements to the Google search algorithm.

Adding E-A-T to the Page Quality section may indicate how Google wants the quality raters to approach content evaluation. The extra emphasis on interstitial pages within the Distracting Ads section suggests that advertisers and webmasters who make use of them may see lower ratings. The additional guidance about content creator expertise may mean lower quality content is under more scrutiny.

Quick Google Quality Guidelines Cheat Sheet

Some Websites are Held to Higher Standards

Google will place certain websites under more of a microscope than others. This is the case when the content affects a person’s wealth, health, or happiness. This means sites in the health, finance, and personal development space need to pay greater attention to content quality and accuracy.

If Your Site Doesn’t Look Trustworthy, Google Won’t Treat it as Trustworthy

If Google sees spam comments, clickbait like advertisements, poor formatting, and other things that detract from your site’s trustworthiness, it will give it a low quality rating because it doesn’t appear to be trustworthy.

Every Page Needs a Purpose

All pages on your website need to have a purpose. The high quality websites out there contain content that helps the user learn something, do something, or go somewhere. Each page should be focused on helping the user accomplish their goal. This means framing content around the user intent of the keyword – not just writing whatever you want as it pertains to the keyword.

High Quality Content Can Become Low Quality Content

If you create content you believe is high quality, but then never go back and update it to keep it fresh and current, it can and will become low quality content. This is especially important for medical and financial related topics, because the information changes in these areas often.

For content to be considered high quality, it should be written by, or supported by an expert. Financial and medical advice needs to be written by, or at least contain quotes from accredited experts. Real world experience is an acceptable measurement of expertise for other topics. Life experience is considered real-world expertise, so an author who has lived through something and shared their experience can be considered an expert.

Broken, Buggy, or Hard to Use Pages are Low Quality

If your want a high quality website, you should ne maintaining it and monitoring it to ensure users consistently have a functional experience. If pages aren’t loading, aren’t easy to use, or are full of bugs, Google will penalize you.

Reputation Matters

If you have great content but a bad reputation, you’ll get a lower quality score. A bad reputation will bring the entire site down. If you have a bad reputation, it’s not the end of the world because there are things you can do to improve your online reputation. However, it’s not something that can be considered an instant fix. We offer online reputation management services to help you keep an eye on things and improve them when and if it becomes necessary.

To maintain a good reputation, it’s important to provide quality customer service. When someone takes the time to leave a review of your business online – whether on Google, Facebook, or another platform, you should always take time to respond to the review whether it is positive or negative. Never go on the attack, even if the commenter is wrong in their review. Reach out and offer to take the conversion offline via phone, or off the review platform via email to ensure it gets resolved.

To ensure your website gets a high quality rating any time a quality rater takes a look at it, you’ll want to regularly check your site for broken links and images (making repairs if any are ever discovered), keep your content up to date and add new information when and where appropriate, remove spam comments, create author biographies that showcase experience, keep the user experience clean and remove any distracting ads, and make your site as easy to use as possible.

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