SEO News

Posted by Daniel_Marks

It seems like every couple months (weeks?) there’s a new post predicting the end of SEO:

But rather than proclaiming that SEO is already dead (it’s not), let’s look at 3 ways in which the SEO industry might eventually die and ways in which SEOs can prepare themselves.

1. New ads

Google is constantly experimenting with new ad formats that actually provide a better user experience than organic results. The better the ads, the less traffic that will be captured by organic listings. What are some examples of when PPC ads provide a better UX than organic results?

Finding service providers in select cities:

Google has rolled out home service ads to a few markets as a way of making it easier to find various contractors. Even sites with incredible local SEO will have a hard time competing with the convenience of these ads, not to mention the extremely valuable endorsement by Google.

More info: Google Home Services Ads Launch In AdWords Express

Researching cars:

This is a relatively simple example of Google providing a bunch of relevant information directly in the SERPs with a simple interface that will, inevitably, come at the expense of people clicking through to organic listings about car reviews, details, dealerships, etc. I suspect that Google will continue rolling out these rich, informational interfaces to high-value verticals such as credit cards, mortgages, legal services, and so on.

More info: Google launches its giant mobile search ads for automakers in the US

Finding flights:

It’s hard to imagine such a prominent, compelling interface not sucking up a decent amount of organic clicks. Google Flights has also likely contributed to the fact that Google earns twice as much travel-related revenue as Expedia.

App discovery

This is one of the most ambitious ad interfaces that Google offers — you can literally play apps directly within Google! No need to download the app or click through to a site. It’s incredible.

Image source

SEO hasn’t traditionally been a huge driver of app discovery, so app streaming for games specifically might not be that disruptive to SEOs, but you can imagine this functionality being rolled out for all sorts of purposes. For example, instead of building functionality similar to Google Flights, maybe Google could simply send you to the Kayak app interface within search results and piggyback off the improved user experience of apps dedicated to one specific purpose.

More info: Google Adds NEW Interactive Ad Format Targeting Gamers

Searching for products

As interesting as the previous examples were, the most dangerous Google ad products for most SEOs would likely be the different ones related to product discovery.

Product Listing Ads (PLAs), for example, offer a fairly basic interface relative to the previously mentioned examples, but this simplicity makes them very dangerous because it makes them so easy to scale. Google doesn’t need to build a bespoke solution for different verticals or sets of queries.

It’s not hard to imagine a future where product queries on Google simply return a large set of product cards with the option to buy directly within the Google interface. The pieces are already there with PLAs and the limited rollout of the ability to buy directly on Google through select websites. All it would take is Google expanding the number of product cards and the number of sites that offer direct checkout through Google. The implications of a shift like this are hard to overestimate.

These product-related ad interfaces include:

• Product Listing Ads (PLAs):

• Showcase shopping ads:

More info: Google rolling out major change to PLAs for broad product queries, among other Shopping updates

• Buying directly on Google:

More info: Winning the shopping micro-moments

There are other examples of rich ad interfaces (please share some below, as it’s always interesting to see more!) and Google has many reasons to continue rolling them out as far and wide as possible:

• To attract more clicks: The more compelling the ad, the more people will click on it, the more money Google will make
• As a response to ad blockers: Entice users to whitelist Google because their ads are actually a better user experience than organic results
• Simply a better UX: Finding a handyman through the new format is easier than navigating the organic results, which makes people happy, which makes Google happy

What can SEOs do about it?

• Stay aware of these new ad formats to make sure you’re experimenting with those that are relevant to your business
• Avoid competing on SERPs that are overtaken by interactive ads
• Find ways to differentiate your on-site experience from what Google is offering

Best-case scenario:

Ad-blocking continues to grow and these rich ads remain on a small percentage of overall queries because they’re difficult to scale.

2. New search interfaces

What happens when people no longer find what they’re looking for by typing in a Google search and clicking through to a result? Some of these alternative interfaces include:

Voice search

It’s difficult to rank for a search query that is heavily personalized and has only one result:

Non-Google “search engines”

There are a lot of sites that arguably offer a better search experience for a specific type of query:

• Wikipedia – Informational queries
• Yelp – Local business queries
• Amazon – Transactional queries

Will people shift more and more of their searches to sites that offer a search experience tailor-made to one specific type of query?

“Pre-search,” such as Google Now

Google Now effectively tries to give you information you’re interested in before ever having to type in a query:

You can imagine quite a few verticals that could be disrupted by improvements to pre-search:

• Flights: We know you tend to fly home for the holidays. Instead of searching for “flights to Vancouver,” we’ll surface some holiday flight deals for you in November.
• Entertainment: You don’t need to search for a specific movie or play. We’ll surface tickets to events we predict you’ll be interested in before you ever type in a query.
• Food: We know you’re walking around at dinnertime and there happens to be an Indian food restaurant nearby which we predict you’d like — let’s send you a notification about it.
• Products: We know you tend to buy Jordan shoes. Let’s show you the latest Jordan release before you ever need to look for it.

Using chatbots

Perhaps conversational commerce will actually take off and people will start finding products/information by using chatbots:

Image source

More examples here: 11 Examples of Conversational Commerce and Chatbots in 2016

Shrinking SERPs

This has been well-covered, but Google continues to aggressively enrich organic results such that the mythical “ten blue links” SERP only makes up about 3% of searches:

The expansion of ads above the fold for some queries hasn’t helped, either. It’s hard to capture organic clicks on a SERP that looks like this (cut off):

These changes are especially impactful on mobile devices which already have limited screen real estate as is.

What can SEOs do about it?

• Optimize for whatever “search engine” your users are on. You’ll need to understand where your audience is searching for information that might be relevant to your business and then optimize for the platform they’re on.
• Use structured data. The easier your site is to understand, the more future-proof it’ll be.
• Avoid competing on SERPs that are overrun by rich interfaces.

Best-case scenario:

These new interfaces consume a relatively small percentage of overall searches. They might continue to cover more and more informational queries (“when is Mother’s day 2017?”), and personal ones (“set an alarm for 7am”), but transactional queries (“new Jordan shoes”) remain on conventional screens because ultimately, finding products through voice search or a chatbot might not be the most enjoyable experience:

1/ Conversational commerce is unproven, even in Asia. If texting takes more time than clicking a button on a webview, why is it better?
— Connie Chan (@conniechan) April 1, 2016

3. New Google?

Google could potentially become so good at understanding websites that you don’t need to worry about SEO. Good user experience could become 100% indistinguishable from good SEO. Want to use asynchronous JavaScript to render your global nav? Go for it! Want to hide content behind a sign-in wall? No problem! Want to launch your site internationally without hreflang tags? Who cares! Google doesn’t really want to reward a site because it knows what rel=canonical is; it wants to reward it because it satisfied a user’s intent. Therefore, Google is inherently working to make SEOs obsolete; maybe one day they’ll succeed.

What can SEOs do about it?

Broaden your skillset and make sure you’re providing value beyond simply optimizing a website for Google.

Best-case scenario:

Google will always need the help of SEOs to understand the Internet.

Despite these threats, I think it’s very unlikely that SEO disappears as a discipline anytime soon. I have yet to run into a site that doesn’t have large SEO opportunities to capture, given the right projects. I also believe the best-case scenario for each threat is actually the most likely scenario. That being said, it can still be helpful to think through future threats to the SEO industry. Can you think of any others?

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Posted by randfish

Friends and fellow SEOs, I just need a few minutes of your time. This is gonna be short and sweet.

If you’re optimizing a page to rank well for a keyword or set of keywords, you probably use some sort of checklist to make sure you’re doing the right things. That might be through an SEO plug-in like Yoast or through Moz Pro’s On-Page Grader, or it might be just be a mental checklist. The problem is, there’s a crucial set of flaws in how I’ve seen a lot of marketers and SEOs approaching on-page SEO in the last few months, and I want to help.

These five mistakes and biases are popping up too often in our field, so let’s address each with simple, tactical fixes.

#1: Kill those keyword repetition rules

I know. Many tools, free and paid, check for how many times a keyword is used on a page and in certain elements (like alt attributes of images or meta description tags or in bold text). The SEO software world’s on-page suggestions, Moz’s included, are far behind Google sophistication in this sense, but you don’t have to be. Use tools’ simple rules and checks to make sure you’re meeting the minimum bar, but don’t fall for advice like “1 use of the keyword phrase every 100 words” or “at least 4 uses of the keyword in HTML text.”

The MozBar’s on-page suggestions are pretty good for this (though even it has some flaws, e.g. 75-character URL limits strikes me as too short), and don’t get bogged down in much X number of repetitions malarky. Remember that Google cares a lot about how visitors interact with your content. If searchers don’t click on your listing, or do, but bounce back to the SERP because you’re not delivering the content or experience they want, you’ll soon be off page one (see Brafton’s excellent, recent case study on this).

Bottom line: Yes, it’s still wise to use the keyword that searchers type into Google in your title, your description, and on the page. But repetition-based rules are not gonna boost your rankings, and may inhibit your usability and content quality, which have far greater impacts.

#2: Searcher intent > raw keyword use

Serve the goals of the searcher. Deliver the experience they need and the answers they want. This is vastly more important than any simplistic keyword use rule.

Want a quick and easy way to figure out what searchers are seeking around a broad keyword? Do some basic keyword research!

E.g. I popped “faberge eggs” into Keyword Explorer, looked at the suggestions list, chose the “are questions” filter, and BOOM. KWE is giving me insight into exactly what people want to know about the eggs: What are they? How do you make them? How much do they cost? How many were made? Who was Faberge?

You don’t have to use KWE for this; most keyword research tools — even free ones like Ubersuggest or AdWords — will get you there. The goal is to understand what searchers want, and deliver it to them. For example, there are a lot of image searches for Faberge Eggs, suggesting that photos are critical to delivering the right user experience. The many questions and searches related to price and construction suggest that some folks want their own and, thus, providing links or information about how to craft replicas or where to buy them probably makes great sense, too.

In my experience, it’s vastly easier to create content of any kind that serves your visitors first, then retrofit that content with keyword rules vs. the other way around. I get deeply worried when I see marketers or content creators putting the cart before the horse and focusing on keyword use as though some precise placement will incite Google to rank you ahead of all those content pieces that satisfy and delight their searchers.

Bottom line: Discover what searchers want and deliver it to them before you worry about keyword use or repetition in your content.

#3: Related topics and keywords are ESSENTIAL

Raw keyword repetitions and simplistic rules don’t take you far in 2017, but… related topics absolutely do. Google wants to see documents that intelligently use words and phrases that connect — semantically, lexically, and logically — to the queries searchers are using. Those topics help tell Google’s on-page quality analysis systems that your content A) is on-topic and relevant, B) includes critical answers to searchers’ questions, and C) has credible, accurate information.

Let me show you what I mean:

Check out that badass featured snippet. It’s not the #1 ranked page. And strangely enough, it’s the page with the fewest links and linking root domains on page one of Google’s SERPs. But it NAILS the content optimization, providing the right answers in the right format for both Google and searchers.

Seriously, that’s the competition — 9 sites you’ve definitely heard of, whose media brands and domain authority would make you think a come-from-nowhere underdog wouldn’t stand a chance in these SERPs. And yet, there it is, like a beautiful Cinderella story dominating page one.

Want to replicate this success? It’s not that hard.

Step one: Use related topics and keywords. The MozBar makes this easy:

I believe there are a few other tools that provide this functionality, including the Italian SEO Suite, SEOZoom. The MozBar gets its suggestions by crawling the pages that rank for the keyword, extracting out unique terms and phrases that appear on those pages more frequently than in other content across the web, and then listing them in order of relative importance/value.

It makes sense that words like “Peter Carl Faberge,” “Tsar,” “Imperial Easter Egg,” and “Faberge Museum” would all belong on any content targeting this search query. If you’re missing those terms and trying to rank, you’re in for a much more difficult slog than if you employ them.

Step two: If there’s any chance for a featured snippet in the SERP, aim for it by optimizing the format of your content. That could mean a list or a short explanatory paragraph. It might mean a single sentence atop the page that gives the quick-and-dirty answer while beckoning a searcher to click and learn more. Dr. Pete’s guide to ranking #0 with featured snippets will give you more depth on how to get this right.

The best part about this is that few SEOs are doing this well right now. Many don’t even know these processes or tools exist. And that means… it’s still a competitive advantage if you do it :-)

Bottom line: There are keywords beyond synonyms or raw repetitions that can help you rank and claim the featured snippet position. You can find them manually or with tools, and employ them in your content to dramatically boost on-page SEO.

#4: Stop assuming links always beat on-page

This one’s dead simple. We need to change our biased thinking about links and content from the days of 2012. Back then, it was still the case that a few more links with anchor text would move even an irrelevant, low-quality page of content above better and more valuable pages. Today, it’s vastly more likely that very-well-linked-to pages (as in the example above) are getting their butts handed to them by marketers who go above and beyond with their on-page SEO efforts, winning despite a link deficit because they deliver the content and the experience Google (and searchers) want.

Bottom line: If you’re ranking on page 2 or 3, blunt-force link building shouldn’t be the only tool in your wheelhouse. Modern on-page SEO that better serves searchers and more intelligently considers content formatting and word usage and searcher satisfaction has got to be part of the equation.

#5: Pages matter, but so, too, do the sites hosting them

In 2012, Wikipedia and big sites like them dominated many results simply by virtue of their raw link authority and importance. Today, domain authority still plays a role, but it’s not just link equity or the size and popularity of the site that matters. There’s an element of topical authority and expertise in Google’s algorithm that can deliver dramatic results to those willing to lean into it.

For example, in the SEO field, Moz has topical authority thanks to our years of writing about the subject, earning links from the field, becoming associated with the subject, and the close semantic connection that the words “Moz” and “SEO” have all over the web. The entity *Moz* surely lives in some Google database with a close word-association to SEO, just as SeriousEats lives alongside recipes, Dribbble lives alongside design, Zappos lives alongside shoes, and Zillow lives alongside real estate.

Last year, I showed off this slide when talking about the power of brand associations:

In many cases, it’s not just about optimizing a page for a keyword, or earning links to that page, but about what your brand means to people and how the entity of your brand or organization might be associated with topics and topical authority in Google’s eyes. This means that “on-page optimization” sometimes extends to “on-site optimization” and even “off-site brand building.”

If Moz wanted to start ranking well for keywords far outside its current areas of thought leadership and topical relevance, we’d likely need to do far more than just go through the on-page SEO checklist and get some anchor text links. We’d need to create associations between our site and that content space, and indicate to Google and to searchers that they could trust us on those topics. If you’re working on ranking for sets of keywords around a subject area and struggling to make progress despite nailing those two, topical authority may be to blame.

How do you build up authority around a topic? You associate your brand with it through online and offline campaigns. You publish content about it. You earn links from sites that talk about it. Your brand name gets searched for by people seeking it. You develop a following from the influencers around it. You become synonymous with it. There are thousands of tactics to pursue, and every organization is going to do best with the tactics that work for their audience, play to their strengths, and enable them to uniquely stand out. Just make sure you figure this into your calculus when considering why you may not be ranking, and what you may need to do differently.

Bottom line: Websites earn associations and connections with subject matter areas in Google. To earn rankings, you may need to address your entire site’s brand focus, not just an individual page’s keyword targeting.

As always, I look forward to your thoughts around these issues and the tips I’ve given. I know many SEOs are already on top of these, but given how often I still see old-school on-page SEO practices in play, there’s clearly still an opportunity to stand out by getting them right.

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!