Was: keywordsIs now: concepts,

questions and themesAttacat

Joel Lumsden

Device and user personalisationTopics and co-relevance/semanticsWh-questions and answer boxes

Schema and entity markup

Note: I studied linguistics so I love saying things like ‘lexical semantics’

Google is smarter than it wasHummingbird algorithmMachine learning (RankBrain)So much data!

How relevant are ranking positions?

“I checked and we rank well”

Really?Things are changing...

More ads

Social updatesor maps

News

Answer box(often at top)

LocationDifferent locations = different results

Edinburgh = No.1London = No.5

Device, browser...

Desktop Android mobileiOS 6 mobile

Windows Galaxy S6iPhone 6

Edge ChromeSafari

No.1 No.3No.2

Tip: Spot checkingChrome incognito windowRight-click > Developer tools

Select device e.g. mobile

①

①①

Tip: Spot checkingSelect location (lat-long)Network and user agent

See attacat.co.uk/brain/chrome-inspect-element

②

②

②

③

③

Keyword rankingsRank tracking should take all this into account

Look at indicative trends at least

Keyword rankings

Track mobile vs. desktop

Track location A vs. location B

Page rankings

Track performance of pages receiving search traffic

• From different terms / themes• Head terms / converters / long-tail...• From different devices etc.

Analysis cycleRemember why you’re rank tracking

Question > Data > Change > Observe

Topics and semantics

Google understands themesIt’s about lexical semantic relevance

With machine learning, Google can continually analyse what’s ‘best’

You’re more likely to rank if you’re more relevant to the search query

Variants and co-occurrencehttps://moz.com/blog/7-advanced-seo-concepts

Build topically related keyword listsMost searches have never been searched for before

Themes!Group thematically-linked termsCommercial vs informational

Build topically related keyword listsSearcher needs and the questions they need answering

• Question them! Get personas and groups.

Develop content themesMoz keyword explorer and Moz Pro related topics

Obviously Google Keyword planner

nTopic to analyse content’s topical relevancy

More toolsGoogle Suggest / autocomplete: use Keywordtool.io

Sistrix amazon keyword tool is great for commercial queries

Tools like Buzzsumo or Impactana for social and content

Wh-questionsTry to get answer boxes

AnswerThePublic.com

Entities and schemaSo…as part of this ‘things’ are more important‘Things’ have relationships, related terms, co-occurrence etc.

Schema markupHelp Google understand the entities you’re talking about why you’re relevant

Use Schema.org (you can also try schema-creator)

Schema markupCan do it ‘inline’, with JSON-LD (talk to your dev), OR

Try the Google Search Console data highlighter

Understand entitiesAlchemy API: try the free public modelCheck your site and competitors

Also TextRazor.com

Some excellent readingMoz Whiteboard Fridays (keywords)Anything by Mike KingAnything by Cyrus ShepardAnything by Gianluca Fiorelli

Thanks and enjoy Edinburgh!@attacat_joel www.attacat.co.uk

@attacats