mkirchhoff

M Posted 7 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Michael Kirchhoff, one of BrightEdge's top SEO minds, wrote this series of articles on the semantic web and what it means for SEO. It is one of the best set of advanced SEO content we have, so we updated it and are publishing them again for the community. Be sure to read all three:

1. Semantics and the Future for SEO
2. Content Silo-Value for SEO
3. Taxonomies and Technical SEO and UX Strategy

BrightEdge Marketing Since its birth in 1998, Google has been continually evolving and improving its ability to match users with the websites that answer their needs. The Internet has grown from just over an estimated 17,000 websites in 2000 to well over a billion now. This tremendous growth has put an enormous amount of pressure on Google and the other major search engines to be able to interpret what people are looking for and better understand the value and depth of the websites available. This pressure pushed Google to introduce semantic search into its algorithm.

Beginning with the Knowledge Graph in 2012 and the Hummingbird Update in 2013, Google stopped looking at strings of letters in a sequence and trying to match them to the strings of content on a website. Instead, the algorithm began to understand the ‘meaning’ within the query and on the website.

The search engine was working to understand context and intent and then match the idea that the user was looking for with the best website, rather than just matching the words. While Google has been working on improving its algorithm, there has also been simultaneous growth in the content marketing industry and the number of people who use the Internet when researching products and services.

An estimated 94% of B2B buyers and 81% of customers currently use online research while determining what product they want to purchase. Within the marketing sphere, an estimated 88% of B2B marketers and 76% of B2C marketers use content marketing.

This exponential growth in competition and demand - an estimated 90% of the data available has been produced in the past two years alone - along with the improvement of digital technology has also led to increased expectations on behalf of the search engine users.

People now require sophisticated and user-friendly sites that quickly meet their needs. If you fail in this task, they will just click off and go to the next one on the SERP.

For sites to meet the needs of these users and the modern Google algorithm, we believe that logical organization (taxonomy) and content silos are the key.

This structural system allows you to organize and classify your available content in a way that helps both search engines and users navigate your content and understand the depth of your knowledge on the topic at hand.

Silo Structuring and LSI

Silo structuring ties closely with Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), which has been around for several years. A few notable resources that can introduce you to LSI and the role it plays in site building can be found on SEOBook’s excellent post on LSI or Bruce Clay’s post. In short, and to paraphrase SEOBook, the benefits of LSI and its ties to semantics and silo structuring are the following:

• The LSI system will first record the keywords contained within a document
• It will then record the keywords used throughout the silo
• It will then compare the keywords used in the document with those used throughout the silo
• The documents that contain large amounts of common keywords are considered semantically similar, those that do not are considered semantically different.

There is some debate as to whether or not the major search engines directly use LSI in their algorithms; however based on studies and my personal experience, I believe they do. Regardless, silo structuring and LSI work from the audience perspective. Therefore, the question of, “does Google use LSI?” becomes less significant. When you add the value of silos and content organization to your website and products for improved UX, you have created a meaningful and purpose-driven website that aligns content to the audience. This is what Google has been telling us is the key to success from the beginning. Constructing an efficient silo therefore requires a careful look at your user experience, your content coverage, the linking structure between content and pages in the silo, the keywords used in the silo, and your taxonomy. This is just part 1 of a 3-part series that will break down for you the principles of content silos and how you can use this strategy to boost your click-through rate, conversions, and ranking.

How Google is pushing semantics forward

LSI, the Knowledge Graph and Hummingbird laid the foundation, but Google continues to push the issue of semantics forward, calling on webmasters to conform to improve or maintain their rankings. In 2015 they introduced RankBrain, their first leap into the world of artificial intelligence. The engineers for the search engine aimed to create a system that not only would be able to understand how different concepts were related because of manual inputs, but would actually be able to learn how different concepts relate.

RankBrain was specifically designed to help Google return useful results for the roughly 450 million completely unique queries it receives each day. Shortly after RankBrain, Google stopped participating in the announcement and naming of algorithm updates and encouraged the community to focus on quality and relevance with the implication that RankBrain would be able to recognize and reward that focus.

Learn about the impact of SEO topic clusters.

This push towards semantics has changed the way SEO is done. Now, rather than trying to match the keywords and vocabulary that your targeted audience is using, you want to match to the topics that they are asking about. Suddenly, related vocabulary terms are not only relevant but often important as a way to demonstrate your depth.

Establishing silos on your site takes a little effort, but it will prepare you for the changes Google continues to make to the algorithm. Each section of this series will help you understand the topic on a deeper level and will make it easier to understand how to build your silos yourself.

Here is what we will cover in each section the this blog series. Look for future posts.

Part 2 - Technical SEO and Content Strategy

In this part, we will explore how semantic search helps Google understand your site organization and how site silos influence Google’s idea of your domain authority and competence. As you create your content silos, you will also work on aligning each step to the buyer’s journey and a keyword group. Here we will explore the value of using technical SEO as a part of your overall authority and why it can help influence your rank. Read Part 2

Part 3 - Creating a UX and SEO-Based Taxonomy

In part 3 we will dive deeply into the taxonomy - your classification categories - of your project. We will see how you can use your terms to align your content and then manage your created system. You will look at how to do a taxonomy markup and how create a system that works specifically for your needs. Learn more about SEO technology in the BrightEdge platform.

Read Part 3 Login to the BrightEdge platform to get started today, or request a demo to learn more. 

maspillera

M Posted 8 years ago

t 9 min read

Voice represents a significant transformation to the way end users interact with Search. The convergence of Voice, vertical search engines, and mobile will accelerate the fragmentation of Search and the need for agile and targeted SEO for voice.

Organic continues to be a critical channel for marketers. The expansion and modification of paid search placements on Google, implementation of the Knowledge Graph, featured snippets, local results, and now question-answer SERPs have all come and gone. Despite all of that we know that in 2017 Organic still comprised 51% of all web traffic on average. People continue to browse and engage with organic listings on the SERP. There is one technological development that seems to pose a fundamental shift to the way people interact with and navigate through search engines, and that's voice search. By speaking a query to your mobile or home device, the user effectively bypasses the SERP and is delivered an answer without ever having to browse search results, click through to a new site, or, in some cases, even look at a screen. This is the true "Position 0" reality that SEOs have been talking about for a while now. It's obvious that we need to start optimizing for voice, but there are extra levels of nuance beyond simply, "let's go after more Quick Answer boxes," that are worth considering.

Why is voice search important for digital marketing?

In one way, voice search results are simply a continued evolution of the featured snippets that now sit at the top of the SERP for a number of query-based search terms. Google itself has stated that featured snippets help with appearing in voice search queries, and Quick Answers featured snippets are often the source for the answers delivered by Google Voice Search and Google Home for voice queries. The significance of this relationship is even more apparent when you factor in that in 2016, Google SEO Sundar Pichai said a full 20% of Google searches made on mobile and Android devices are voice searches. The proliferation of voice search-enabled devices has also been dramatic. One in six adults in the United States owns a "smart speaker" device as of 2017, according to NPR and Edison Research. Additionally, a Northstar Research study commissioned by Google in 2014 found that 55% of teenagers and 41% of adults included in the survey used voice search more than once a day. It's for these reasons and more that we believe Voice will be a tidal wave that search marketers should be prepared to surf. Of course, the extent to which that's actionable depends partly on how much data is available to work off of, which is - at least for now - one of the main challenges.

What kind of voice search data do we have?

One of the biggest challenges SEOs and digital practitioners have in terms of optimizing for voice search is that we simply don't have very much tangible data on it yet. Back in 2016 John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, said in a Webmaster Central office hours session that Google had been in discussions to add voice search traffic data to Google Search Console. The amount of data that's been made available since then, however, has been limited. Mueller did subsequently mention that voice query data would likely be presented as a separate dataset from standard GSC keyword data, but not much else. This isn't out of any desire to withhold information on the part of Google. Rather, as Mueller himself has said, the challenge on the search engine side has been to figure out the optimal way to parse and display this huge new dataset in a way that will be intelligible to the marketer. Despite this, based on best practices for featured snippets and aforementioned Quick Answers we do know enough to have a good sense of how to position for Voice:

1. Analyze your search reporting for question queries and long queries
2. Find the 100 most popular questions in your industry, site, CS, or, help section
3. Ask the question in the title, answer the question in the body
4. Focus on answers and getting position 1 and Quick Answers or “position 0”
5. Check for popular answers in Yahoo Answers and Quora
6. Enhance use of structured micro-data and schema
7. Enable voice-to-text to search your site to match context query was made in
8. Use conversational language on pages to map to queries coming from digital assistants

BrightEdge can help you to better identify and target these Quick Answer and featured snippet and, by extension, voice search opportunities. By using the Universal Search Results view in the Keyword Reporting module, as well as looking up your own domain in Data Cube, you can track which Quick Answer boxes you already possess as well as SERPs where you do show up, but don't have Quick Answer placement. Additionally, the Insights solution can elevate Quick Answers opportunities to you based on your existing list of tracked keywords. There is also a whole other additional layer of abstraction (and potential for growth) in SEO for voice: The ever-growing universe of vertical search engines.

Voice search and vertical search engines

There's a layer of complexity to voice search that's easy to miss, and that's that Voice is fragmented. There are two separate points of fragmentation worth pointing out: Firstly, there's a whole universe of other search engines out there. Major examples include Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Depending on your industry and business model, many of these vertical search engines can be of significant value. The need for SEOs to start thinking about vertical search engines is something we've talked about before, but the rise of Voice makes it all the more important. Secondly, when we talk about Voice as a whole we often use the term to refer just to voice searches conducted on Google, and we don't factor in device type. Devices, however, are a vital aspect of how voice search will be delivered to and conducted by end users. Consider how it was only around September of 2017 when Apple switched the default search engine of Siri, the voice-activated digital assistant of iOS, from Bing to Google. Compare this to the Amazon Echo, which uses Bing. There are also narrower, but just as powerful examples, such as how Bixby, Samsung's virtual assistant for Galaxy devices, offers a visual search feature, which can identify brands and products and direct the user to ecommerce listings, uses Pinterest's Lens tool. While these individual examples may not be relevant to every search marketer, they are indicative of how the confluence of Voice, mobile device proliferation, and vertical search engines can drastically affect the angles of attack in SEO for voice search. Observe this example of a mundane voice search query using Alexa that delivers results solely for Amazon-branded products.

Different vertical search engines equal different search intent

Not all search engines are created equally. There are many potential scenarios where a brand may be better served focusing its SEO efforts on one search engine or a set of search engines versus another. It's clear that Voice is transforming organic search as we know it. This transformation isn't the end of Organic, it's another layer of complexity that will make savvy SEOs and digital marketers who understand user intent and approach it using a smart content framework more important than ever. If you're hoping to gain more information on the topic, download BrightEdge's POV on voice search.

maspillera

M Posted 8 years 5 months ago

t 9 min read

Running an effective digital marketing campaign and SEO with a small team can seem daunting. It's doable, however, with planning, training, and technology. This two-part series will offer advice to help brands see how to maximize the resources they have in their small teams. You can read Part One here.

When you have the members of your team performing different digital marketing skills and functioning as hybrid professionals, you can be sure that time is of the essence. SEO with a small team must understand how to work quickly and effectively. To accomplish this, and to produce content that ranks well and draws in customers, understanding how to make a digital marketing plan with your small team in mind remains a critical piece of the equation.

Determining how micro-moments look for your business

In the modern customer journey towards a purchase, there are four main micro-moments that can appear in any order at any time:

• The I-want-to-go micro-moment
• The I-want-to-know micro-moment
• The I-want-to-do micro-moment
• The I-want-to-buy micro-moment

Through desktop and mobile devices, customers can make searches that fall into one of these intent headings at any time. Rather than following a predictable path like the customers of the past, the modern, digitally connected consumer will access them randomly and sometimes progress towards a purchase within a few hours, other times not for months.

Google, in an effort to better serve its end users, has worked to better understand the intent behind user queries and where those queries fit within the micro-moments. The search engine then works to take this understanding to create a SERP that displays content tailored towards customers with these understood intentions. Given that the SERP changes depending upon the micro-moment, brands need to understand how these micro-moments manifest themselves for their particular customers and the significance of each for their business.

A local restaurant, for example, might have a big emphasis on that I-want-to-go micro-moment, while an ecommerce store will look at the I-want-to-buy micro-moment with particular interest. A software provider may take a special interest in the I-want-to-do and the I-want-to-know micro-moments. It's important to note that although a certain micro-moment captures the attention of particular organizations, that does not mean that the other three do not also play a role in their customer’s journey. The better you understand how the micro-moments look for your customers and which ones will most closely impact your bottom line, the easier it will be for you to determine where your focus should lie. You will be able to make a better judgement call about the types of content that will be the most important and how you should strategize your campaigns, thus boosting the effectiveness of your SEO with a small team.

Managing priorities

When managing SEO with a small team it's impossible to effectively manage every facet of an online presence, so prioritization is critical to success. Once you know the micro-moments and how they impact your business, you can start to look at the types of content that will have the greatest impact for the brand. Analyze the Google SERP to see how the search engine displays content for the popular queries for your target audience and how you can maximize your brand’s presence. Google often uses a combination of video, images, written content, paid, and local listings in the creation of the SERP. Seeing the prominence of each will shape your strategy. You will also need to prioritize your presence and activity on other online platforms, including social media. Countless social platforms now exist for brands to consider, so think about where your customers most expect to see you. A B2B brand, for example, will likely look at LinkedIn as their top priority, often with Facebook as the second priority, and Twitter behind that. On the other hand, a fashion designer will want to place their emphasis on visual platforms, like Instagram and Pinterest with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter playing less of a role.

Bringing in analytics

For a small SEO team, analytics are a critical means of ensuring that all the energy and time expended to create content is productive and useful. As a small team, you cannot afford to waste time creating content that misses the target audience or does not accomplish the goals designed for it. Incorporating analytics into all website analysis will allow you to see the success of your campaigns as well as weaknesses, so you know where to focus your attention to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your efforts. To productively use analytics, you should look at a variety of different factors, including rankings, traffic, engagement metrics, and the revenue generated from the campaigns. This will provide you with more insight into how to target your audience and create the content they want to see. Keep in mind that you will also find value from not only looking at the analytics of your own site, but also those of your competitors. By looking at their content strategies, you can see what has and has not worked for others within your industry, sparking ideas for you moving forward. 

Creating a content schedule

Determine first the types of content that will likely be the most effective for your audience based upon your analysis of the SERP and the analytics you have for your site and competitors’ sites. You'll then want to determine a reasonable rate for the content creation. Remember that you want to focus on balance. Although publishing a few blog posts a week might be ideal, you do not want to spend all the time focusing on blogs to the detriment of other types of content. Have content that is gated as well as some that exists in other formats, such as infographics or videos. Focus on creating quality material that you can be confident will rank well rather than just creating more content for its own sake. SEO success with a small team is totally possible for professionals who stay dedicated and are willing to press forward. By incorporating the proper training and then moving forward with a solid plan, you then just need to focus on incorporating the right technology and coordination to see success that will grow your organization.