Google Webmaster Blog Uncategorized

An update on 2019

Google Webmaster Central

With 2020 hanging above our heads much the same way that bricks don’t, people start reflecting on what they achieved this year, what went wrong, and how they could improve. We’re no different, but instead of choosing what went well or wrong ourselves, we picked the announcements on our @GoogleWMC Twitter account that users interacted with the most, and decided to reflect on those. 

We had launches that you appreciated a lot. For example, we announced at Google I/O that Googlebot is becoming evergreen, meaning that it’s always going to use an up-to-date version of Chromium for rendering. We hope that this will make it easier for developers to create stunning, modern, and snappy JavaScript experiences, by tapping onto the power of over 1000 new features and interfaces that are now supported.

Speaking of robots, together with the original author of the Robots Exclusion Protocol, other search engines, and input from webmasters, we submitted an Internet Draft to the IETF in order to start standardizing the 25-year-old protocol. 

Like Twitter users, we also thought it’s an exciting project which lays down the rules of crawling for good, although it doesn’t change anything for most.

But we haven’t stopped there with touching ancient protocols: we also rethought how we need to treat “nofollow” links to keep up with the evolution of the web. It was an announcement that seemed to be welcomed by most Twitter users, and for a good reason: having a “hint” model for rel=”nofollow” may help us reward those who create high quality content more, by serving even better results to our users.

One of the most tweeted  – and also most humbling – moments this year was when we lost a part of our index, which caused Search Console to misbehave, and also had rendering failures roughly the same time. Since Google Search works like a well oiled machine most of the time, we didn’t have processes to quickly communicate issues to those who should know about them: webmasters. Lacking a proper process and channel to communicate these issues was a mistake and we are still working hard to rectify it, however one thing is clear: we need to do more on the critical communication side of things. 

We do like to communicate, in general: we shoot videos, we go to conferences, big and small, where we reach thousands of webmasters and SEOs, and in 2019 we extended our reach with the Webmaster Conference, which landed in 35 locations around the world in 12 languages. Not to mention the weather reports on our YouTube channel.

We hope you had a fantastic year and the new year will bring you even more success. If you need help with the latter, you can follow our blogs, @googlewmc on Twitter, or you could join us at a Webmaster Conference near you!

Posted by John Mueller, Cheese Connoisseur, and Gary the house elf 

The Not-So-Secret Value of Podcast Transcripts – Whiteboard Friday

NikiMosier

Posted by NikiMosier

What are the benefits of transcribing your podcasts and what’s the best way to go about getting them on your site? Niki Mosier breaks it down into 8 easy steps in this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. Here’s another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I’m Niki Mosier, a senior SEO account manager at Two Octobers, and I’m here today to talk to you about the not-so-secret value of podcast transcripts.

I got the idea to play around with podcast transcripts after hearing Moz’s Britney Muller talk about machine learning and podcast transcripts at TechSEO Boost last fall. 

+15% increase in organic traffic, +50% keyword lift

I ended up getting the opportunity to play around with this a little bit with a pro bono client we had at a previous job, the Davis Phinney Foundation. They do Parkinson’s research and Parkinson’s education. They were already podcasting, and then they also had a pretty robust blog, but they weren’t adding their podcast transcripts. After about three months of adding a couple of podcast transcripts, we saw some pretty good value for them. We saw a 15% increase in organic traffic to the website and a 50% increase to some keyword lift around the keywords that we were tracking.

Google is now indexing podcasts

Why we think this is relevant right now, as you may know, Google announced, at I/O 2019, that they are indexing podcasts. If you do a search for your favorite podcast, you’ll see that come up in the Google search results now. So adding that podcast transcript or any audio transcript to your website, whether that’s video, a webinar, or anything, just has some really good value.

How to transcribe & optimize your podcasts

I’m going to walk you through the process that I used for them. It’s super easy and you can turn around and apply it to your own website. 

1. Download your audio file

So obviously, download the audio file, whether that’s MP3 or MP4 or whatever you have, from your video, podcast, or your webinars if you’re doing those. 

2. Transcribe it

You need to be able to get that text transcript, so running it through either Temi or Otter.ai, both two resources that I’ve used, both really good. Otter.ai seems to be a little cleaner out of the gate, but I would definitely obviously go through and edit and make sure that all of your text and speaker transitions and everything is accurate. 

3. Figure out which keywords the content should rank for

Next up is figuring out what keywords that you want that content to rank for, so doing some search volume research, figuring out what those keywords are, and then benchmarking that keyword data, so whether your website is already ranking for some of those keywords or you have new keywords that you want those pages or those posts to be ranking for.

4. Get a competitive snapshot

Next up is getting a competitive snapshot, so looking at who’s ranking for those keywords that you’re going to be trying to go after, who has those answer boxes, who has those featured snippets, and then also what are the people also ask features for those keywords. 

5. Get your content on-site

Obviously getting that content on your site, whether that’s creating brand-new content, either a blog or a page to go with that podcast, video, webinar, or whatever it is, or adding to it to existing content.

Maybe you have some evergreen content that’s not performing well for you anymore. Adding a transcript to that content could really kind of give it a lift and make it work better for you. 

6. Optimize the content

Next up is optimizing the content on your site, so adding in those keywords to your metadata, to your image alt tags, your H1 tags, and then also adding any relevant schema, so whether that’s blog post schema most likely or any other schema type that would be helpful, getting that up there on the page as well.

7. Make sure the page is indexed in Search Console

Once you’ve done all the hard work, you’ve got the transcript up there, you have your content and you have it optimized, you obviously want to tell Google, so going into Search Console, having them index that page, whether it’s a new page or an existing page, either way, dropping that URL in there, making sure Google is crawling it, and then if it is a new page, making sure it’s in your sitemap.

8. Annotate the changes in Google Analytics

Then the last thing is you want to be able to track and figure out if it’s working for you. So annotating that in Google Analytics so you know what page, when you added it, so you can have that benchmark date, looking at where you’re ranking, and then also looking at those SERP features. Have you gotten any featured snippets?

Are you showing up in those answer boxes? Anything like that. So that’s kind of the process. Super easy, pretty straightforward. Just play with it, test it out. 

If Google is indexing podcasts, why does this matter?

Then kind of lastly, why is this still important if Google is already indexing podcasts? They may come out and do their own transcription of your podcast or your video or whatever content you have on the site.

Obviously, you want to be in control of what that content is that’s going on your site, and then also just having it on there is super important. From an accessibility standpoint, you want Google to be able to know what that content is, and you want anyone else who may have a hearing impairment, they can’t listen to the content that you’re producing, you want them to be able to access that content. Then, as always, just the more content, the better. So get out there, test it, and have fun. Thanks, Moz fans.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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They’re the Best Around: The Top 25 Moz Blog Posts of 2019

FeliciaCrawford

Posted by FeliciaCrawford

Well, folks, it’s that time of year again. It’s hard to believe we’ve already gone another turn around the ol’ sun. But I’ve consulted my analytics data and made my SQL queries, and I’m here today to present to you the list of the top Moz Blog posts of 2019!

For a little perspective, we published 207 blog posts, averaging out to about 4 per week. Out of those 207, the twenty-five I’m sharing with you below were the most-read pieces of the year. If you’re strapped for time (and who isn’t in our industry?), survey says these are the articles that aren’t to be missed. And bonus — a good chunk of them are videos, so bring out the chocolate popcorn and settle down to watch!

(If chocolate popcorn sounds new and unfamiliar to you, I implore you to check out the Cinerama in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood the next time you’re in town for MozCon. It is life-changing. Get the mix of regular and chocolate and never, ever look back.)

I’ll be sharing the top keywords each post ranks for according to Keyword Explorer, too, to give you some idea of why these posts have continued to be favorites throughout the year. Gotta love that “Explore by Site” feature — it makes my job way too easy sometimes! ;-)

(For the Keyword Explorer nerds in the audience, I’ll be filtering the rankings to positions 1–3 and organizing them by highest monthly search volume. I want to see what we’re ranking highly for that gets lots of eyeballs!)

Ready to get started? I sure am. Let’s dive in.

The top 25 Moz Blog posts of 2019

1. On-Page SEO for 2019 – Whiteboard Friday

Britney Muller, January 4th

57,404 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: seo 2019 (#3, 501–850), seo best practices 2019 (#3, 501–850), homepage seo 2019 (#1, 0–10)

On-page SEO has long been a favorite topic for y’all, and the top number-one winner, winner, chicken dinner post of 2019 reflects that loud and proud. In this expert checklist, Britney Muller shares her best tips for doing effective on-page SEO for 2019.

And if you want a hint on one reason this puppy has been so popular, check out #10 in this very list. ;-)

2. The 60 Best Free SEO Tools [100% Free]

Cyrus Shepard, June 10th

51,170 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: seo tools (#1, 6.5k–9.3k), free seo tools (#1, 1.7k–2.9k), free seo (#1, 501–850)

This post is a testament to the power of updating and republishing your best content. Cyrus originally authored this post years ago and gave it a sorely needed update in 2019. There are literally hundreds of free SEO tools out there, so this article focused on only the best and most useful to add to your toolbox.

3. The Ultimate Guide to SEO Meta Tags

Kate Morris, July 24th

42,276 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: seo meta tags (#1, 501–850), 1-page meta (#2, 501–850), what are meta tags (#3, 501–850)

Here’s another vote for the power of republishing really good content that you know your audience craves. Originally published in November 2010, this is the second time we’ve asked Kate to update this article and it continues to deliver value ten years later. SEO certainly changes, but some topics remain popular and necessary throughout all the ups and downs.

4. The One-Hour Guide to SEO

Rand Fishkin, throughout 2019

41,185 reads for the first post (143,165 for all six combined)

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: moz seo guide (#2, 201–500), moz beginners guide to seo (#3, 101–200), moz guide to seo (#2, 11–50)

A “best of the Moz Blog” list wouldn’t be complete without Rand! His six-part video series detailing all the most important things to know about SEO was originally published on the Moz Blog as six separate Whiteboard Fridays. We’ve since redirected those posts to a landing page in our Learning Center, but the first episode on SEO strategy earned over 41k unique pageviews in its time live on the blog.

5. A New Domain Authority Is Coming Soon: What’s Changing, When, & Why

Russ Jones, February 5th

38,947 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: moving a 60 da to a 90 da seo (#1, 0–10), moz da update 2019 (#1, 0–10), upcoming domain change (#1, 0–10)

When we upgraded our Domain Authority algorithm in March, we knew it would be a big deal for a lot of people — so we put extra effort into education ahead of the launch. Russ’s initial announcement post introducing the coming changes was the foremost source for information, earning ample attention as a result.

6. How Google Evaluates Links for SEO [20 Graphics]

Cyrus Shepard, July 1st

38,715 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: free google picture of created equal (#2, 0–10), google 1 page 2 links (#2, 0–10), google top rankingillustrations (#2, 0–10)

All right, I admit it: we did a ton of content updating and republishing this year. And it seriously paid off. Cyrus revamped a perennially popular post by Rand from 2010, bumping it from ten graphics to twenty and giving it a much-needed refresh almost a decade after the original post. The top keywords are kind of weird, right? Check out the title on the original post — looks like we’ve got a little work to do with this one to get it ranking for more relevant terms!

7. Do Businesses Really Use Google My Business Posts? A Case Study

Ben Fisher, February 12th

32,938 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer:  google my business posts (#2, 201–500), how to post on google my business (#3, 101–200), google business post (#3, 51–100)

Even a couple of years after Google My Business Posts became an option, it wasn’t clear how many businesses are actually using them. Ben Fisher asked the important questions and did the legwork to find the answers in this case study that examined over 2,000 GMB profiles.

8. Announcing the New Moz SEO Essentials Certificate: What It Is & How to Get Certified

Brian Childs, May 1st

32,434 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: moz certification (#3, 101–500), moz seo certification (#2, 51–100), moz academy (#3, 51–100)

One of our most-asked questions from time immemorial was “Does Moz offer an SEO certification?” With the launch of our SEO Essentials certificate in May of this year, the answer finally became yes! 

9. Optimizing for Searcher Intent Explained in 7 Visuals

Rand Fishkin, March 23rd

29,636 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: user intent moz (#2, 0–10)

What does it mean to target the “intent” of searchers rather than just the keyword(s) they’ve looked up? These seven short visuals explain the practice of intent-targeting and optimization.

10. 7 SEO Title Tag Hacks for Increased Rankings + Traffic – Best of Whiteboard Friday

Cyrus Shepard, June 7th

26,785 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: title tags for landing page (#2, 11–50), moz free hack (#1, 0–10),  title tag hacks (#1, 0–10)

Title tags can have a huge impact on your click-through rates when optimized correctly. In this Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus shares how to use numbers, dates, questions, top referring keywords, and more to boost your CTR, traffic, and rankings.

11. E-A-T and SEO: How to Create Content That Google Wants

Ian Booth, June 4th

25,681 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: eat seo (#2, 201–500), eat google (#2, 51–100), eat google seo (#1, 11–50)

Ian Booth covers the three pillars of E-A-T and shares tips on how to incorporate each into your content strategy so that you can rank for the best search terms in your industry.

12. 10 Basic SEO Tips to Index + Rank New Content Faster – Whiteboard Friday

Cyrus Shepard, May 17th

24,463 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: how to index a link faster (#2, 11–50), blog seo index (#1, 0–10),  fast on-demand seo (#2, 0–10)

When you publish new content, you want users to find it ranking in search results as fast as possible. Fortunately, there are a number of tips and tricks in the SEO toolbox to help you accomplish this goal. Sit back, turn up your volume, and let the Cyrus Shepard show you exactly how in this episode of Whiteboard Friday.

13. Page Speed Optimization: Metrics, Tools, and How to Improve – Whiteboard Friday

Britney Muller, February 1st

24,265 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: page speed optimization (#1, 51–100),  page speed metrics (#3, 11–50), optimize page speed (#1, 0–10)

What are the most crucial things to understand about your site’s page speed, and how can you begin to improve? In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, Britney Muller goes over what you need to know to get started.

14. How Google’s Nofollow, Sponsored, & UGC Links Impact SEO

Cyrus Shepard, September 10th

24,262 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer:  how to send my publishers no follow links (#1, 0–10), moz nofollow links (#2, 0–10), rel= sponsored (#2, 0–10)

Google shook up the SEO world by announcing big changes to how publishers should mark nofollow links. The changes — while beneficial to help Google understand the web — nonetheless caused confusion and raised a number of questions. We’ve got the answers to many of your questions here.

15. How to Identify and Tackle Keyword Cannibalization in 2019

Samuel Mangialavori, February 11th

21,871 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: keyword cannibalization (#2, 201–500), ahrefs keyword cannibalization (#3, 11–50), what is keyword cannibalization (#3, 11–50)

Keyword cannibalization is an underrated but significant problem, especially for sites that have been running for several years and end up having lots of pages. In this article, learn how to find and fix keyword cannibalization before it impacts your SEO opportunities.

16. How Bad Was Google’s Deindexing Bug?

Dr. Pete, April 11th

17,831 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: google de-indexing again (#2, 11–50), google index bug (#3, 11–50)

On Friday, April 5, Google confirmed a bug that was causing pages to be deindexed. Our analysis suggests that roughly 4% of stable URLs fell out of page-1 rankings on April 5, and that deindexing impacted a wide variety of websites.

17. What Is BERT? – Whiteboard Friday

Britney Muller, November 8th

16,797 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: what is bert (#2, 11–50), moz wbf (#2, 0–10)

There’s a lot of hype and misinformation about the newest Google algorithm update. What actually is BERT, how does it work, and why does it matter to our work as SEOs? Join our own machine learning and natural language processing expert Britney Muller as she breaks down exactly what BERT is and what it means for the search industry.

18. How Do I Improve My Domain Authority (DA)?

Dr. Pete, April 17th

16,478 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: how to build domain authority (#2, 501–850), how to increase domain authority (#2, 501–850), how to improve domain authority (#1, 11–50)

Written to help research and inform his MozCon 2019 talk, this article by Dr. Pete covers how and why to improve a Domain Authority score.

19. How to Get Into Google News – Whiteboard Friday

Barry Adams, January 11th

16,265 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: how to get on google news (#3, 101–200), google news inclusion (#3, 51–100), getting into google news (#3, 11–50)

How do you increase your chances of getting your content into Google News? Barry Adams shares the absolute requirements and the nice-to-have extras that can increase your chances of appearing in the much-coveted news carousel.

20. Topical SEO: 7 Concepts of Link Relevance & Google Rankings

Cyrus Shepard, April 1st

15,579 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: link relevance (#2, 0–10), read more on seo (#2, 0–10),relevant links (#2, 0–10)

To rank in Google, it’s not simply the number of votes you receive from popular pages, but the relevance and authority of those links as well.

21. The 5 SEO Recommendations That Matter in the End

Paola Didone, March 26th

13,879 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: seo recommendations (#1, 11–50), 10 seo recommend (#1, 0–10), seo recommendations report (#1, 0–10)

What are the most steadfast, evergreen SEO recommendations you can make for your clients? These are the top five that this SEO has encountered that consistently deliver positive results.

22. An SEO’s Guide to Writing Structured Data (JSON-LD)

Brian Gorman, May 9th

13,862 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: json structured data (#3, 0–10), seo json content (#3, 0–10), seomoz structured data (#3, 0–10)

This guide will help you understand JSON-LD and structured data markup. Go beyond the online generators and prepare your web pages for the future of search!

23. A Comprehensive Analysis of the New Domain Authority

Russ Jones, March 5th

13,333 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: does post clustering build domain authority (#2, 11–50), who invented domain authority (#3, 11–50), domain authority curve (#1, 0–10)

A statistical look at Moz’s much-improved Domain Authority. Find out how it performs vs previous versions of Domain Authority, competitor metrics, and more.

24. The Practical Guide to Finding Anyone’s Email Address

David Farkas, November 26th

13,263 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: N/A in positions #1–3

The never-ending struggle with link building begins with finding contact info. David Farkas outlines a few simple and easy ways to discover the right person to reach out to, plus some tips on which tools and strategies work best.

25. How to Use Domain Authority 2.0 for SEO – Whiteboard Friday

Cyrus Shepard, March 8th

12,940 reads

Top keywords according to Keyword Explorer: domain authority 2.0 (#2, 11–50), thought domain authority keywords (#1, 0–10), domain authority for seo (#2, 0–10)

Domain Authority is a well-known metric throughout the SEO industry, but what exactly is the right way to use it? In this Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus Shepard explains what’s new with the new Domain Authority 2.0 update and how to best harness its power for your own SEO success.

That’s a wrap for the top posts of 2019! Did we miss any that were on your own must-read list? Let us know in the comments below. We can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!