Future of Search

Trends, Best Practices in Organic Search

By Josh SmithFind and Convert

History of Search Future of Search Important Concepts Future SEO Mindset Best Practices

Index

Baseball Analogy

Analogous to Post Google Panda & Penguin

Unfair advantage

Florida Update (Google) – November 2003◦ Primarily targeted onsite factors

Rel Canonical – February 2009◦ Google, Bing, and Yahoo jointly announced

Social Signals - December 2010 Panda Update (Google) - February 23, 2011

◦ Content Farms, Article Syndication Penguin Update (Google) – April 24, 2012

◦ Blog Networks, Site-wide Links, Exact Match Anchor Text

(Quick) History of Search

Knowledge Graph - May 16, 2012 EMD Update - September 27, 2012

◦ Large Scale devaluation of exact match domains Page Layout - October 9, 2012

◦ Page layouts with too many ads above the fold.

(Quick) History of Search

Blog Networks

Article Marketing

What does Google want?◦ Provide answers to search intent and not just give

links.◦ Want to connect topic, ideas, people, places,

things◦ What is? When? Where are?◦ Answers questions

What is Pi? What is the harlem shake?

Future of Search

How do they plan on connecting all this data?◦ Entities◦ Google Authorship◦ Synonyms (Not keyword based – Topic based)

Matt Cutts has his own synonym team Lag from what Google wants and where it is today

Imagine a search engine that can differentiate 101 level content and 401 level content.

Future of Search

Important Concepts

Knowledge Graph

Answer 30% of users next queries

Connects the dots between entities.

Google is connecting authors that write quality content (receives links, social, cocitations) and connecting them with the vertical that they write in.

Google Authorship

Co Citation is when the Brand is mentioned without a link in context to a specific topic.

Example: Coca Cola will be mentioned in articles regarding soft drinks not computers.

Co Citation

Excerpt from the Wall Street Journal.

How does Google determine the authority of the website?

How does Google determine the quality of content?

How does Google determine higher quality for 2 identical pieces of content?

Greatness is not an algorithm factor. Answer: Links, Social, & Co Citations to a

webpage.

Authority

Google has been giving more love to brands over the past updates.

Brands

User Input a Brand Signal

Brands

Anchor Text Distribution (Offsite)

High quality links .edu, .gov, cnn, wsj, etc. Sometimes a lot of links to go with the high

quality Social Shares Branded Anchor Text

◦ Don’t forget some exact match

<a href=“http://www.brand.com”>Branded Anchor Text</a>

What is needed to rank?

High quality content will create links, social shares. This is how Google determines high quality content.

E.g., Faces of Meth

Effects of Content Marketing on Search

“Click Here”(guess who ranks for this?)

Write for humans Don’t write for search engines Quality of the content in context is KING Be Marketers not Google Manipulators

◦ Be Awesome ◦ Be Creative

Future SEO Mindset

Hint: The Future is Now!

Create linkable assets◦ Interview series◦ Tools◦ Contests◦ Polls◦ Cover current news events

Examples of Creative SEO Marketing

Best Practices to Future Proof

Webpages rank, not Websites Know the User Intent in the keyword

◦ Don’t go by just traffic Targeted Traffic

Closely related keywords can target the same page◦ Cars, Autos, Automobile, Vehicle

Blog Posts are for Long Tail This works well with “Siloing” the website

Best Practices - Keywords / Landing Pages

Keywords

Keyword Approach - Shotgun not Sniper

Silo Architecture / Landing Pages

Blog is completely separate – All content created goes under the blog if it is not a landing page. URLs have the correct subdirectory.Example: www.website.com/silo1/category1/page

Be natural If you do optimize content use synonyms.

But DO NOT over-think, be human. Images & videos enhance the quality of a

post.

Best Practices - Content

Google has an army of really well paid, smart, socially awkward people who live in front of their computers 18 hours a day.

Content needs to be data driven (KPI). Landing Pages vs Blog Post Competitive Research

◦ What are competitors writing about?◦ How well is their content performing? (Links & Social)

Timely Research ◦ Trending / Hot Topics / Informational (Google Trends)

Client’s Content◦ Are the posts generating traffic, links, social

mentions? If not then there is VERY little value given to the content.

Best Practices - Content

How are URLs performing? (Not Keywords)◦ Traffic◦ Links◦ Social

Best Practices - Content Performance

Source: Kuno Creative

They comment, share, and link to content. Helps domain authority for ranking.

More importantly if the site gets hit by a future update all traffic does not cease.

This mindset helps build a business not just rankings.

Best Practices – Focus on Building an Audience

How will anybody find an awesome piece of content if it is only on the your blog?◦ A) Either you have a huge audience following that

will promote your content◦ B) Or outreach has to be done to build the brand’s

presence How to build an audience?

◦ Reach out to other people & websites in the vertical Use the employee team if at all possible

◦ Can be very time consuming and expensive Goal: Brand Awareness, Links, Traffic

Best Practices - Promotion

Best Practices – Balanced Traffic Sources

Internal Links should be natural and for the user. ◦ Don’t overuse Exact Match.

Internal links only pass authority from other websites linking to it.◦ Can’t vote yourself up for competitive keywords.◦ Stay within silo

Internal Links should be focused to help a landing page.◦ Don’t cannibalize rankings.

Blog posts can interlink The more internal links on a page the less link

juice is passed to each page.

Best Practices - Onsite

Don’t give hard numbers per post◦ Sites that were hit by penalties were by more

factors than just internal linking◦ Don’t be afraid, be cautious◦ Biggest thing is to have the right mindset

Don’t overuse exact match anchor text Be different as much as possible (anchor

text) Internal link to relevant landing page or

blog post

Best Practices – Internal Links

Use appropriate alts for images after seeing the image. Don’t just put keywords in the image.

Title and h1 should be different. Blog Posts can get away with this.

Don’t over optimize URLs◦ www.website.com/my-first-keyword-1/second-

keyword-here

Best Practices - Onsite

Put blog structure as Category -

www.website.com/blog/name-of-category Blog Post - www.website.com/blog/blog-post This prevents having duplicate content on

site if multiple categories are selected for a post.

Best Practices - Onsite

Over-optimization◦ http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-se

o-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday

Content Performance◦ http://uk.blueglass.com/blog/content-auditing/◦ http://pointblankseo.com/scrape-rate◦ http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-r

ate/

Resources

Silo Architecture◦ http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm

Landing Pages◦ http://yoast.com/cornerstone-content-rank/

Entities / Synonyms◦ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_e

mbedded&v=NpnnXt7CHMU◦ http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/01/insignifican

t-terms-in-queries/

Resources

CoCitation / CoOccurence◦ http://www.seomoz.org/blog/prediction-anchor-tex

t-is-dying-and-will-be-replaced-by-cocitation-whiteboard-friday

◦ http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/11/ranking-webpages-relationships-co-occurrence-patent/

◦ http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/11/not-all-anchor-text-is-equal-other-co-citation-observations/

Resources

Matt Cutts◦ http://www.theshortcutts.com/◦ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMY-iNnqUIo

URLS◦ http://www.not-implemented.com/urls-are-for-peo

ple-not-computers/

Resources

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