understanding & optimizing seo · you can recruit writers that have expertise where can you...

© 2020 Perception Builder LLC, All rights reserved

UNDERSTANDING & OPTIMIZING SEO

Ragan Virtual Boot Camp – May 13, 2020


CAVEAT: PRESENTING IS NOT MYDAY JOB

Less… More…

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INTRO

○ 22 years doing web development

○ 14 years doing SEO and lead generation

○ 8 years owning development and SEO

company

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HELPING COMPANIES WITH SEO

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TODAY’S TOPICS

1. SEO Basics Analytics, Tech SEO, & Keywords

2. Diving Deeper EAT, BERT, Content Optimization, Content Types, & Link Building

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– Ronald Cortes/AAF/Getty Images


1.SEO BASICS

When you’re ready to crawl

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YOU ARE HERE

Record baseline metrics before starting anything

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Get insights before you make changes

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TECHNICAL SEO

59% of SEO specialists state that technical on-site optimization is the most effective SEO strategy used.

9– medium.com/@21stRenaissance/the-state-of-enterprise-seo-in-2017-de7ae1f5e318


START WITH SPEED

○ Time To First Byte (TTFB)How fast your server STARTS to respond.

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– Getty Images


SPEED MATTERS FOR RANKING

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0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12

visual_complete

speed_index

fully_loaded

requests

start_render

doc_complete

first_byte

Correlation

(Neil Patel Digital)

Seconds (moz.com)


WONDERINGHOW YOUR TIME TO FIRST BYTESTACKS UP?

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0.2

1.3

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

TTFB

Recommended Ragan Attendees Average

Seconds

Google’s recommended TTFB is 6X faster

Longest TTFB:33.0

_________

20% met recommendation


START WITH SPEED

○ Page Load TimeHow fast your page renders in the browser - combination of TTFB, how your site is built, and how fast resources load.

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SPEED MATTERS FOR USER EXPERIENCE AND CONVERSION

A one-second delay in page load time yields:

○ 11% fewer page views

○ 16% decrease in customer satisfaction

○ 7% loss in conversions

– The Daily Egg (crazyegg.com)

14– thedesignblitz.com

© 2020 Perception Builder LLC, All rights reserved15

– Cloudflare


– The Daily Egg (crazyegg.com)


WONDERINGHOW YOUR PAGE LOAD TIME STACKSUP?

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2.5

9.1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Page Load Time

Recommended Ragan Attendees Average

Seconds

Industry standards recommend loading more than 3X faster

119% increased

probability of people

bouncing off your site

Slowest Page Load:

37 sec_________

5% met recommendation


TOP SPEED METRICS

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Metric Recommended Internet AverageRagan Attendees

Average

% Meeting

Recommendation

% Meeting

Internet Average

TTFB 0.2 sec 1.3 sec 1.3 sec 20% 85%

Page Load Time 2.5 sec 4.7 sec 9.1 sec 5% 20%

Request Count

Average

<50 75 108 10% 33%

Page Weight 500 KB 1.9 MB 4.1 MB 0% 20%

– thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-measurement/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/

– machmetrics.com/speed-blog/average-page-load-times-for-2020/

– back linko.com/page-speed-stats

REQUEST YOUR SPEED EVALUATION: perceptionbuilder.com/ragan


How do I prioritize my teams efforts?

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ONE SERVICE ADDRESSES ROUGHLY 80% OF THE ‘CHECKLIST’ ITEMS

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OPTIMIZE FOR CRAWL BUDGET

○ Crawl budget is the amount of time Google will spend crawlingyour site

○ Wasting Google's time = hurts your business

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“You are what Googlebot eats.

– AJ Kahn

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“Your rankings and search visibility are directly related to

not only what Google crawls on your site, but frequently, how often they crawl it.”

– Cyrus Shepard, ZyppySEO


Why is crawl budget important?

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“A well-structured website, with quality content and in conformity with the rules that Google’s bot sees as good practices, increases the crawl rate. This means that your position on the search engine results will improve. Consequently, the chances of your website being found by your audience also increases.”

https://blog.hotmart.com/en/crawl-budget/

“Obviously, if many of your web pages aren’t getting crawled, you’ll never see traffic on those pages. Low crawl budget can lead to low ranking as many of your pages will never rank in Google. Thus, you need to make sure that all your important pages must be crawled by Google.”

https://hackernoon.com/what-is-crawl-budget-and-how-it-will-affect-your-website-ranking-e09dcfaa8aba

“When Google is ignoring chunks of your website it’s a good indicator that you have something to improve. Remember: crawling is the first step on the road to organic traffic.If pages aren’t getting crawled, they’re not going to get into the index or, if they were indexed, they are at risk of dropping out of it.”

https://www.botify.com/blog/how-to-use-crawl-frequency-metrics-for-seo


TECHNICAL FACTORS THAT IMPACT CRAWL BUDGET

○ Speed - Can crawl more pages

○ Sitemaps - Knows where to find those pages

○ Robots.txt - Know which sections to skip / avoid

○ Not Javascript rendered – Google doesn’t need to render so it is faster

○ Limit redirects - Doesn’t waste time following redirects

○ Fix broken links - Doesn’t waste time crawling broken pages

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IMPACT OF PAGE LOAD TIME

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(Wojciech Murawski, Onely.com)

Seconds

“…if a page hasn’t been

crawled recently, it won’t rank

well.”

– AJ Kahn


CONTENT FACTORS THAT IMPACT CRAWL BUDGET

○ Content curation - Get Google to like the content that matters

○ Improve your money pages’ content and links

○ Don’t serve the same content for:● https://www.example.com● http://www.example.com● https://example.com● http://example.com● https://www.example.com/?some-query-string-parameter● They should be 301’d to the domain you choose

○ Ditch thin and duplicate pages

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– Jeffrey Preston, Disney

(searchengineland.com/ranking-factors-session-recap-from-smx-advanced-2018-300383)


CHOOSING A PLATFORM THAT GOOGLE IS INVESTED IN

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WordPress

Joomla

Shopify

Drupal

Squarespace

Wix

Others

CMS MARKET SHARE

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63.3%

4.2%

4.0%

2.8%

2.5%

2.3%

20.9%

Data source: W3Techs.com, 8 May 2020


BRANDS BUILT ON WORDPRESS

○ BBC America

○ Sony Music

○ Sony.com

○ The White House

○ TechCrunch

○ Etsy

○ Home Depot Careers

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○ Chicago Sun Times

○ The New Yorker

○ Variety

○ The Walt Disney Company

○ Time, Inc.

○ The New York Times Company

○ Snoop Dogg


TECH NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND SEO○ Provide SEO trainingfor developers

○ Work together to prioritize SEO needs and tech impact

○ Incorporate SEO tools into the code QA process:

● Yellow Labs● Page Insights● Webpage test● Mobility Tester● Google Structured Testing Tool● Google Search Console

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EASIER AND BAD FOR SEO: https://www.example.com/sort?catid=1&filter=3,4&limit=10&price=4

HARDER AND BETTER FOR SEO: https://www.example.com/canoes/yellow/


KEYWORDS

Targeting the correct keywords is imperative

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HOW TO ASSESS KEYWORDS

Volume

Is there going to be

any traffic coming in

for this keyword if I

rank for it?

Competition

Is the site powerful

enough to rank for it

(eventually) on the

first page of Google?

Consumer Intent

Does this keyword

show that the

consumer is ready to

take action?

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SEO BASICS WRAP-UP

1. Tech SEO has the highest ROI

● Speed ● Crawl budget● Tech needs to know SEO● Get a technical SEO audit performed to see where you are

2. If you are targeting the wrong keywords, you are wasting your time on SEO

● Get a keyword audit performed if you haven’t already

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2.DIVING DEEPER

When you’re ready to walk

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empowernetwork.com


“The internet is a cesspool where false information thrives…brands are how you sort out the cesspool.

– Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google

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BRAND X HIRES CELEBRITY SPOKESPERSON

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UNDERSTAND E.A.T.

Expertise | Authority | Trust

How brand and authority came to dominate the Google algorithm

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“Google hires evaluators to analyze content and rank it on a scale of “Lowest” to “Highest” quality. The evaluators help Google understand how the algorithm updates are performing, but they

don’t have direct input into the algorithm itself.

– Valerie Turgeon, brandpoint.com

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Example of algorithm update impact on mercola.com41

Washington Post

Sistrix US Data


SHOW YOUR EXPERTISE

○ Awards, industry membership, and certificates

○ Guest posting

○ Speaking at conferences

○ You can recruit writers that have expertise

○ Where can you excel? Formal expertise or everyday expertise?

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You need to have real experience, clear understanding, proper education or credentials on the topic you’re writing in order to be called an expert.

– Lo Jia Thong, SEOPressor.com


BUILD AUTHORITY

○ Links from relevant or authority sites

○ Mentions in the news or across the web

○ Your content / brand is being shared / mentioned across social platforms

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– semrush.com/blog/ways-build-expertise-authority-trust-boost-seo-semrushchat-sherry-bonelli/


BE TRUSTWORTHY

○ BBB, LinkedIN

○ Ability to contact

○ Terms and Conditions

○ Privacy Policy

○ Address in footer

○ HTTPS

○ Author bio

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– Examine.com


GOOGLE’S BERT UPDATE

The impact of improved processing of natural language

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CONTEXT MATTERS

“(BERT) was the result of Google research on

transformers: models that process words in

relation to all the other words in a sentence, rather

than one-by-one in order.

BERT models can therefore consider the full context of a

word by looking at words that come before and after it.

This is particularly useful for understanding the

intent behind search queries.”

– Google Blog 46


https://blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert

BEFORE AND AFTER BERT

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BERT INSIGHTS

○ Websites Targeting Irrelevant Keywords Will Take a Hit

○ Long-Tail Keywords Become More Important

○ Localized Content May Have a Greater Impact Than Translated Sites

○ Relevant Content Will Continue to Produce the Best Results

○ BERT would be a factor in potentially giving higher priority to a how-to titled article, compared to a less-specific page

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“Unlike many other algorithm updates and changes, BERT

isn’t something that’s necessarily

going to have a huge effect on most sites, nor is it something a

site could have prepared for…”

https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/how-google-bert-will-impact-seo-and-marketing/


IMPACTS OF BERT

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To see what things you have lost / gained positions, impressions, go to:

○ Google Search Console → Performance → Date Compare

○ Only choose one metric at a time to look at to see difference


MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR CONTENT

Your mission: Make badass content that users will love and people want to link to

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Percent of clicks compared to position in SERPs51


HOW? FIND CONTENT RANKING BELOW POSITION 5 & OPTIMIZE

Need to show Google that you know what you’re talking about

○ Then: Keyword stuffing

○ Now: Integrating related topics and concepts (TD/IDF LSI)

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VIKING FUNERALS RELATED TOPICSNorway | Norse funeral | Death | Pyre | Burning boat | Burning ship


Technique: POPping

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Technique: Manual Optimizing

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MAKE IT THE BEST PAGE ON THE INTERNET FOR YOUR TOPIC

○ Get contributor quotes / reactions to the article

○ Testimonials from peer group or authorities

○ Visuals!!! Add graphics / charts

○ Make it the authority on the internet

55iDashboards UK for medium.com


MIX AND MATCH

○ Start by POPping a few pages

○ Then intermix some of the different techniques to see what gets the best results.

○ Blog! It’s long-standing SEO advice for a reason…

Websites with an active blog generate 67% more leads and 434% more indexed pages than those who don’t.– FactBrowser.com / TechClient.com

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EVERGREEN AND TIMELY CONTENT

As different as running a marathon

or running a sprint

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EVERGREEN CONTENT

○ Relevant 3,5,10 and even 20 years later

○ Provides long term sustainable traffic

○ Generally requires in depth research and lots of effort

○ Generally much longer form 2000 - 6000 words

○ Slow and steady wins the race

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https://moz.com/blog/content-shares-and-links-insights-from-analyzing-1-million-articles


EVERGREEN PROS/CONS

Pros

○ Timeless & relevant

○ Builds trust and authority

○ No time crunch

Cons

○ Basic

○ Competition / saturated market

○ Tons of work

○ Not sexy

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– cognitiveseo.com/blog/10794/evergreen-content-great-for-seo/


EVERGREEN EXAMPLES

○ Guides / How To’s / Tips & Tricks

○ Answers to FAQs

○ Case Studies

○ Definitions / Did You Know?

○ Lists / Checklists

○ Longform Infographics

○ Expert Roundups

60– nerdwallet.com


TIMELY CONTENT

○ Short form (a thousand words or less) - generally

○ Spike of traffic● If seasonal story, can be repurposed for the next year

○ Faster and easier to produce

○ Might be good for one short burst of time

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TIMELY PROS/CONS

Benefits

○ New & fresh content more exciting than how-tos

○ Because of that it gets more attention

○ Easier to publish / less research

○ Can be more opportunities to monetize

○ Can boost engagement

○ Can get brand recognized and add trust

Cons

○ Limited window where relevant

○ Less ROI because of this

○ Traffic is spiky and not sustained

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TIMELY EXAMPLES

○ Stats that will go out of date

○ Holiday or seasonal articles

○ Touch on cultural fad or trend

○ Breaking news or events

How to

○ Create a content calendar with holidays, seasons, events and anything recurring year to year

○ Plan content months ahead

○ Create a stockpile of content ready to go

○ Publications keep obits up and ready to go for this reason

○ Set up alerts for news / stories you’d want to cover

○ Obviously, you need to share it

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WHAT CONTENT MIX DO I AIM FOR?

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80%

20%

Evergreen

Timely


LINK BUILDING

Getting good external links is one of the most direct ways to move the needle for SEO.

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LINKS SIGNAL IMPORTANCE

External Links

○ Quality over quantity

○ Related sites are

better link sources

Internal Links

○ Valued content

○ Potential advantage

if done right

Outbound Links

○ Limit number per

page

○ Link to quality

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PageRank works by counting the number

and quality of links to a page to determine a

rough estimate of how important the website

is.

– Google’s Archived About Page


THANKS!

You can find me at [email protected]

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REQUEST YOUR SPEED EVALUATION: perceptionbuilder.com/ragan

understanding & optimizing seo · you can recruit writers that have expertise where can you...

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