SEO News

Posted by adamf

[Estimated read time: 6 minutes]

Just a few months back I wrote a blog post reviewing Moz Pro in 2015 and shared some of our lofty goals for 2016. Now that we’re a quarter of the way through the year, I wanted to share some of the progress we’ve made and offer a glimpse into other great SEO features we’ll be working on over the next three months.

Want to learn more about Moz Pro?

Campaign rankings leveled up

We overhauled Moz Pro’s rankings architecture, dramatically improving response times and unlocking all kinds of new features. For the full scoop on the core release, check out Jeremy’s excellent post. Below are some improvements included in the bigger release, as well as some additions we made after the fact.

#1: See your rankings data over any timeframe

For years we collected your rankings data over time, but, confoundingly, we were never able to make that data fully accessible in the product. We’re pleased as punch that this is now supported on top of our more stable and flexible architecture. This is great for those looking for deeper comparisons, analyses, and reporting.

#2: Advanced sorting and filtering

Those same architectural limitations made it slow and laborious for us to build in new filters and sorting. You can now filter to your heart’s content by location, label, and text string. For example, you might quickly create a filter to show only your branded keywords, with a location of Seattle, and that include the word “coffee.” This is especially powerful when you have a long list of keywords, where sorting and filtering was once slow and unmanageable. Oh, and you can sort your keywords alphabetically now too. Thanks for your patience!

#3: Google algorithm overlays on your graphs

Dr. Pete has done some amazing work in tracking Google algorithm updates with Mozcast. You can now leverage that data to get more value out of your rankings reports. If you go to one of your campaigns and look at your last year or two of rankings data, you’ll see vertical lines on the graph corresponding to major algo updates. Hover over the little icon at the bottom to learn more about what happened. If you’ve seen your organic search traffic suddenly increase or decrease, this is another great diagnostic in your toolkit.

#4: Improved performance and UX

Our new, better-organized, cleaner interface makes it easier to read and customize your reports. Faster pages are pretty nice, too.

#5: New weekly email updates

This is another improvement that I’m pretty psyched about. Our new emails are cleaner and more informative, and now include both ranking updates and important insights that we discover for you each week. We plan to add more timely information to these as we continue to improve our datasets and refine the logic behind Insights.

On-page analysis is much better with Related Topics

In March we launched a new feature that can help you make sense of how search engines understand topics and phrases. You can use this data to build deeper content, improve your topical authority, find keyword ideas, and generally better understand the SERP. It uses machine learning and topic modeling to mine related topics from the SERPs.

#6: Topical analysis report

See the topics that your SERP competition is writing about. This can help you understand what kinds of keywords signal topical relevance and provide good ideas for how you can make your content more robust and relevant to searchers. I’m not going to go too deep here, but check out Jon White’s fantastic post for some great tips and examples to get the most from this feature.

#7: Quick access to on-page and topical analyses from Rankings

Page Optimization scores are now included in your rankings views, so you can see which landing pages have potential for optimization and jump directly to the report for keyword targeting suggestions and topical analysis.

We’ve made Insights better

A long while back, we dabbled with a new section in campaigns called Insights. This mini-dashboard is tasked with surfacing interesting problems, statuses, and insights from across all sections within a campaign. This section is still a work in progress, but we made some nice additions in the last couple of months.

#8: “To do” and “done”

We heard feedback that many of you are using the Insights as to-do list items. Now you can check them off your list once you’ve read them, or when they’re complete. A new workflow improvement allows you to dismiss an insight you’re done with. This allows for better tracking of work progress.

#9: Add to Trello

If you need a more robust workflow, we’ve added a way to quickly add insight tiles to Trello. Trello is a power task management solution, which also happens to be free. I’ve used it quite a bit myself, and happily recommend it.

#10: Rankings Summary tile

A new tile providing a quick look at your latest rankings, including your most significant improvements and declines.

Reporting got some needed attention

Outside of the more obvious features I’ve shared, we’ve also been working quietly behind the scenes to make our reporting and exports better.

#11: Customizable CSV exports for rankings

When we launched the ability to select custom timeframes in rankings, one feature that lagged was the ability to export data specific to that timeframe. We recently launched updated CSVs in that section that will respect filters as well as time frames.

#12: Revamped interface for custom reports

Adding and managing custom reports is easier to use and easier on the eyes.

A glimpse into the future

We have a few other tricks up our collective sleeves.

Keyword Explorer!

Yup, this long-anticipated keyword research tool is literally just around the corner. Be wary.

Keyword analysis page revamp

When you click on a keyword from a campaign, you will very soon be presented with a much cleaner and more informative analysis to help you understand your history with that keyword and its SEO potential.

Keyword volume in campaigns

We’ve been working on a more accurate keyword volume metric that offers a volume range built on multiple data sources, instead of a very precise but often incorrect number. You’ll find this soon on the keyword analysis page, and a bit later along with your keywords rankings, so you can better gauge the value of the keywords you track and the rankings you earn.

SERP features

A high organic ranking is excellent, it’s true. However, with an increasing number of ads, packs, and answers on many SERPs, your visibility might still be low. We plan to include the top SERP features that SEOs can act on along with your rankings. This can help you better understand visibility and inform strategic choices.

On-page reports from the Mozbar

Kick off a page analysis report directly from the MozBar as you review the page on your site.

“Real” PDF exports

Our current PDF export solution is functional, but pretty rough. It converts page modules into images and then encapsulated them in a PDF. Yeah… not so great. We’ll soon launch an updated method for creating PDFs so that they include text as text and images as images, offering better editing, copying, and image quality.

New & improved site crawl

Expect big improvements to the interface and the data surfaced. On top of that, this update includes a rewrite of the crawler itself, allowing for faster and more reliable crawling. We are targeting a beta in Q2 and a full launch in Q3.

In conclusion…

We’re keeping busy and trying to bring more value to our products. If you aren’t a customer and want to check things out, go ahead and give Moz Pro a spin with a 30-day free trial.

As always, please share your thoughts. We count on your candid feedback to help us guide our priorities build better products.

Before I go:

I want to give a shout out to our sisters and brothers at Moz that are working tirelessly on focused offerings for content marketing, influencer marketing, local search, and API data access. If you find yourself in need for such tools, check them out!

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!

Posted by Kenia

[Estimated read time: 9 minutes]

The rise and rise of online video content over recent years is showing no signs of slowing. According to Cisco Forecast, video will represent 69% of all consumer-based Internet traffic by 2017; this is expected to rise to 80% by 2019.

Meanwhile, another study from Business Insider estimates that video advertising will account for 41% of total desktop display-related spending in 2020 in the US.

Looking at these stats, it’s clear that video will continue to be a critical element of successful digital marketing strategies for the foreseeable future. As YouTube and Facebook jostle to be top dog in online video, our team of digital marketing scientists at Wolfgang Digital naturally wanted to run an experiment to determine which platform delivers the best value when promoting video content and, importantly, how much quality watched time you get for your investment on each advertising platform.

Let’s analyze the numbers and try to settle the “Facebook vs YouTube” video battle once and for all!

Setting the scene: Facebook versus YouTube

Here’s how the battle for video has been shaping up over recent years.

• New online video platforms such as Vine, Instagram, and Snapchat have emerged in the last two years.
• Meanwhile, others — like Facebook Video — have grown considerably.
• In April 2015, Facebook got 4 billion daily views. In the space of just 6 months this figure doubled, reaching 8 billion daily views.
• Critics pointed out that the arbitrary metric of “a view” didn’t really mean much, since YouTube counts a view after 30 seconds and Facebook counts a view after only 3 seconds.
• In January 2016, Facebook announced that people watch around 100 million hours of video a day.
• In February 2016, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, reminded investors that YouTube’s audience watches hundreds of millions of hours of video every day.
• Since 2012, YouTube has measured its performance in terms of “hours watched,” not video views.
• As of 2016, Facebook now also refers to the “hours watched” metric.

So, where can you get the best value for your video advertising budget?

Our experiment ran the numbers — including impressions, overall time watched, and quality time watched — to find out.

Wolfgang’s video experiment

For this experiment, we advertised the same 20-second-long video over the same period of time and with identical budgets via YouTube ads and Facebook Video ads. We also targeted the same type of individuals using demographics and interest-based targeting.

The first hurdle to overcome was that each platform has different methods for counting views and charging for advertising.

How YouTube and Facebook charge for video ads

In YouTube advertising, you’re charged per view. A YouTube “view” is counted after 30 seconds (or the full duration of the video, if it’s shorter than 30 seconds) or when a user engages with your video.

Facebook, on the other hand, charges by cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) and a “view” is counted after just 3 seconds. Facebook also displays the Cost Per View by dividing the total spend of the campaign by the views.

Taking this information into account for our experiment, a YouTube video view will be counted when it reaches the full duration of our video (20 seconds) and a Facebook view will be counted after 3 seconds.

How to calculate overall watched time

Despite the fact that both YouTube and Facebook have begun referring to “hours watched” as a statement of their performance, this metric is not easily accessible to advertisers. At the time of posting, neither the AdWords nor the Facebook interface give you a number for the exact amount of time watched.

In the AdWords interface, you can find the “quartile report,” which shows you the percentage of your audience that viewed certain percentage runtimes of your video (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). For instance, in the table below, 91% of total viewers watched up to 25% of the video. In Facebook, you can find a similar report, but instead of showing you percentages it shows you the number of views per percentile. So according to the table below, there were 2,240 views of up to 25% of the video.

What this meant for our experiment was that in order to estimate the overall watched time on each channel, we had to use different techniques based on this table and utilize YouTube Analytics.

It’s difficult to estimate total time watched using the AdWords interface, but we’ve discovered a 5-minute method that doesn’t require any complex math work. See the steps outlined below.

Calculating overall watched time: YouTube

1. First of all, forget about the AdWords interface and go to YouTube Analytics.

2. Click “Traffic sources,” then select the video you want to measure, the timeline you used when you promoted it, and finally, filter your data by traffic source by selecting “YouTube Advertising.”

3. Once you have done that — voilà! You now have overall watched time without having to break out the calculator.

*Please bear in mind that there can be a slight variation between the data in YouTube Analytics and the data in the AdWords interface.

Calculating overall watched time: Facebook

It’s a little bit trickier to measure overall watched time on Facebook, as there’s no advanced measurement system in place like in YouTube Analytics.

Facebook displays video views per percentage of the video watched. In order to estimate the overall watched time, you need to:

1. Get the difference between the views in each percentile (to avoid double-counting). A viewer that has watched 100% of the video has watched 75%, as well.

2. Multiply that difference in views by the watched time in that percentile.

3. Also, don’t forget to count the views (more than 3 seconds) that haven’t reached the 25% mark of the video.

The problem with this technique is that you could over- or under-count the time watched, since each percentile varies by almost 5 seconds. For this reason, we are taking the midpoint of each percentile to estimate the overall watched time.

The findings

As we previously mentioned, we compared the results between both channels by focusing on the following metrics: impressions, overall watched time, and quality time watched.

Impressions

When we compared the same promoted video on both platforms, we noticed that the number of impressions on Facebook was 334% higher than on YouTube. This is because the cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) is considerably cheaper on Facebook. YouTube CPM stands at €4.31 whereas Facebook CPM is €0.98.

When promoting a video on Facebook, you could get 3 times more impressions for your budget. However, since autoplay could be activated on users’ devices, every impression could potentially count as at least 1 or 2 seconds for Facebook’s overall watched time count.

If Facebook counts those autoplay seconds from the impression as a part of their overall watched time, then that could explain why Facebook Video is growing so quickly. By charging a more competitive CPM, Facebook is maximizing its overall reach. As a result, the watched time increases, too.

Overall watched time

So, how did the two platforms fare in terms of overall watched time?

Since neither the Facebook nor the AdWords interface displays an exact time metric, we’ve taken the midpoint of each percentile to estimate the overall watched time.

For example, for our 20-second video, a view in the 25% percentile could include anywhere between the range of 5 to 9.9 seconds. Since there’s no way to determine the exact time, the midpoint in this percentile would be 7.45 seconds. We have also taken autoplay into account for both channels.

Our results showed that overall watched time was higher on Facebook (19.9 hours, including autoplay time) than on YouTube (17.7 hours).

We know that YouTube Analytics only shows the watched time from the number of legitimate views for your videos (more than 30 seconds or the full completion of your video if it’s shorter than 30 seconds). In this case, legitimate views would represent around 7 watched hours from the total 17.7 hours.

Does the overall watched time affect the cost? No. In fact, this metric gives you visibility on all the additional watched time you are getting for “free.” Since we’re only paying for full views on YouTube (7hrs), we could see that there were about 10 hours of watched video coming from non-complete views that we didn’t have to pay for.

The big question is: How is Facebook counting the overall watched time? If it’s considering more than “views” in its calculation, that could represent almost 20 hours of watched time. On the other hand, if it’s taking only views (more than 3 seconds) into account, that could cut the watched time in half to 9.6 hours!

So for Facebook, if you’re reporting on cost per view, any time watched below 3 seconds is essentially free of charge.

Quality watched time

Watched time could be a really impressive metric for these video giants and their epic battle, but digital advertisers and their clients should be more concerned about “quality watched time.”

Quality watched time is a relative metric and can vary from video to video. It’s up to you to determine what should be considered quality watched time for your video. A useful way to do this would be to count quality watched time as the point in your video where you’ve delivered your message and call-to-action (CTA). If your video is really short, maybe you’d only count complete views as quality watched time.

Since our video is only 20 seconds long and the CTA is at the end of the video, we considered a complete view as quality watched time.

In our experiment, Facebook video advertising delivered approximately 4.6 hours of quality watched time, at a cost of €5.47 per hour. YouTube delivered approximately 7.3 hours of quality watched time at a cost of €3.44 per hour.

In other words, a full watched minute on Facebook cost €0.09, whereas on YouTube it cost €0.06.

*Please bear in mind that these are time approximations, since YouTube also counts a view if the user is engaged (e.g. if the user clicks on the video). Moreover, a full view in Facebook is counted not only when your video is viewed to 100% of its length, but also if the user skips to this point.

Facebook vs YouTube: Who’s the winner?

Well, that depends on your KPIs. If you want to put your video in front of as many people as possible, you may opt for using Facebook, whereas if you want to pay for quality watched time, YouTube may be a better option. We highly recommend using both channels in order to expand your reach.

*Overall time watched is an approximation. Since there isn’t an exact way to measure watched time. The results may vary depending of the quality of your video, length and target audience.

Do you use both channels? How do you measure video success?

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!

Many in the industry still cling to the growth of organic as the metric to measure success but, while it’s still very important, we’re not measuring like for like when comparing with years gone by.

So how are SEOs missing out on credit, and what else should they be looking at?

Organic search has changed

Traditionally, the way we judge the success of an SEO campaign is by the growth of the organic channel. In essence, the more visits and sessions that come through this channel, the better.

While search has become more expansive, encompassing everything from online PR to social, this metric of success has remained constant. 

Put simply, though, this isn’t as simple a metric as it once was to judge success.

By making technical changes to improve a website and producing engaging content, you can make sure your web presence gives off all the best signals to Google and hope that has a positive effect on organic traffic.

However, as Google’s algorithm becomes more precise and complex upon how it analyses sites, it’s not a sure thing.

Organic search is primarily about SERP rankings but, with new additions to results pages such as the carousel and answer box, good rankings aren’t the sole route to success.

Google carousel

For example, there’s evidence that the answer box – which scrapes content from ranking results – quite often doesn’t choose the top ranking site.

So, even if the authority of your site means you’re not ranking as well as you could, Google could still recognise quality information and place you in the answer box.

Conversely, you may be ranking well but may not be receiving the clickthrough rate that you once did if a competitor gets their content in the answer box.

The importance of quality on-site copy has, therefore, never been more pressing. 

The boundary between organic and direct has blurred

As the industry has naturally evolved it’s become more difficult to definitively attribute traffic to one channel or another.

A number of factors, including improvements in browser technology, have meant that traffic that would once have been attributed as organic traffic is now being attributed as direct.

Although technology is advanced in these fields, SEOs are still selling themselves short by just looking at organic when, as part of optimising organic, we can drive more traffic than we are often credited for.

Groupon ran an experiment in 2014 in which it deindexed itself for a full six hours (not something we’d recommend trying!) to try and understand how users were truly getting to their site.

By deindexing its website, Groupon removed the possibility of users finding their site through search.

Users could still get to the page by entering the website URL in the address bar, for example, or if they had it saved in their bookmarks, but it allowed Groupon to look at how both direct and organic search was affected by it.

Measuring its longer URLs (e.g. www.groupon.com/local/san-francisco/restaurants), the company saw that as organic traffic dropped to near zero after the change, direct traffic also dropped by 60%.

This big chunk of what Groupon thought was direct traffic dropped as soon as the site was de-indexed. 

Indexing is purely for search purposes so that Google can crawl your site and offer you up in its SERPs.

If this traffic disappeared, it could indicate a couple of things. While the problem could be metric based, for example, an issue with the website’s Google Analytics tracking, it could also be as a result of misattribution.

One study isn’t evidence of an industry-wide problem, but it does highlight the need for SEOs to better understand and measure the true source of their website’s traffic.

Browsers have become more advanced

The way we search has changed and that’s partly due to the advancement of browsers. Modern browsers have evolved to look and work differently to their ancestors.

In the past, when we were searching for something online, we would enter the address of a search engine and then search for the query or just search directly from the address bar.

The search engine then delivered SERPs based on our query and we would click through to the relevant website.

While that is still a common method users use to search, today, browsers may even suggest a URL from your history when you start typing a query in its address bar.

If you click on this suggested URL, that traffic bypasses a search engine and is attributed as direct. Browsers such as Chrome or Safari are clever enough to now know what brand you’re searching for even after an incomplete search is entered.

In both instances, this means that some traffic you once took previously took credit for as organic could now be recorded as direct traffic and therefore not reported on. 

Fig 1. Safari suggests a website 

Fig 2. Desktop chrome suggests relevant URLs from a user’s history based on a generic query

Impact of mobile

Mobile browser usage varies quite a lot compared to desktop. While Chrome and Safari still take up most of the market, Android’s own internet browser is used by around 11% of mobile users, and Firefox barely features at all.

This is important as, even since improvements in the referral data from mobile visits, there’s still a lack of consistency.

Some mobile applications often do not send referral data, so traffic almost always comes through as direct.

For example, if a user clicks through to your site from a Google Maps app – an app which pulls data from the Google My Business listings you’ve optimised as part of your SEO strategy – then you’re probably not getting the credit for it.

Fig 3. The Apple Maps app uses Yelp & Apple Maps Connect to send traffic to a website, however, this is attributed as ‘direct’.

Google Earth and the Google Maps app will also attribute this to ‘direct’.

Apps taking organic traffic

Another reason why we may see less organic traffic hitting a website is if a user has an app for the relevant site that appears in the SERP.

Clicking the SERP listing can now direct users straight to the content ‘in-app’, without hitting the website at all.

If you are solely responsible for sending users to a website, this will reduce the amount of traffic you’re seeing.

Local listings and Yelp

Local listings are vital to businesses with physical premises, especially those who rely on local trade.

The people nearest to you are most likely to use your services, so making sure you’re being exposed to this audience is vital.

However, they can also be of great benefit to your SEO strategy.

The most important part of local listings is that you have standardised, consistent details about your business across the web, particularly the name, address and phone number (NAP details) – specifically in your Google My Business account.

The details you put in are dragged through to Google SERPs with local listings and Google Maps / Google Earth so they need to be correct.

Your business listing will be more trusted, and rank better if Google can see that the NAP details are consistent across a number of aggregators.

So, it’s for that reason that many SEOs undertake a task of adding consistent listings on platforms such as Yelp.

Fig 4. Yelp, a local search engine or a social platform? 

This issue here is that by creating and optimising this listing (initially to boost their organic local presence), many SEOs neglect to take credit for the relevant traffic that these places can drive.

Yelp, for example, has around 150m unique users per month. While it is technically classed as a social platform by Google Analytics (by default, this can be reconfigured), it has many of the same features as a ‘local search engine’. 

We also have various changes that Google has made in recent years to the layout in mobile SERPs.

Currently, the ‘local pack’ doesn’t have an immediate website click-through option unless the listing is expanded.

The main action you’re encouraged to do is click-to-call, an action that will bypass the website (and any call tracking), thus SEOs may neglect to take credit for that call.

Fig 5. A mobile SERP for the term ‘sheds’, showing click to call option in the ‘local pack’

There currently isn’t any robust way of understanding what traffic the My Business listing brings via analytics, but you can regularly share the reports dashboard provided in the platform to highlight your work.

Google isn’t the only map

Google Maps is a great tool, but it’s also not the only tool out there. Apple Maps, while still lagging behind Google Maps, has the advantage of being pre-loaded on millions of new iPhones.

The rival to Google Maps uses a number of sites to pull through its data, but you can be sure it will pull your Yelp business listing so you need to make sure they are optimised.

You can also add/manage your listing via ‘Maps Connect’. As with Google Maps, traffic from Apple Maps generally is attributed as direct.

This means that even if you’ve optimised your listings you’re not getting the credit through those precious organic search listings.   

In summary…

We can compartmentalise different aspects of search into organic and paid channels but the end goal is the same: impressions, clicks and, ultimately, conversions.

Instead of splitting our departmental efforts into individual channels, we need to realise that search has changed.

The organic channel is still an important metric to measure success, but there is so much more to showing the true value that your endeavours as an SEO brings.

Taking a narrow view of ‘solely measuring success via improvements to the organic channel’ is neglecting the wider value of your digital marketing endeavours.

The key to all of this is data is simple: make sure you know where to get all the information that shows the value you’re providing and take credit for it.

Send your client or managers reports from your My Business account, Apple Maps Connect and try to understand the organic influence on direct, Yelp and others.

Include referral traffic data from links and listings that you created and app analytics data with organic as the source.

Look at all the work you do across your campaigns and provide examples and data to show the full effect your work is having.