December 23, 2019 |
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The In Search SEO Podcast
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Summary of Episode 53: The Best Moments from The In Search SEO Podcast in 2019
From the nuances of E-A-T to when you need to take into account SEO automation to Fraggles to having a various skilled background when doing SEO… these are our high 10 moments on The In Search SEO Podcast from 2019!
Before we get into the Top 10 interview moments on The In Search SEO Podcast, an enormous thanks must exit to you, the viewers and listeners of this podcast. We have seen the podcast develop over the course of 2019 and it’s all due to you. We actually respect you tuning in every week. It actually means lots to us. Thank you very a lot.
We would additionally prefer to thank this 12 months’s co-hosts, Kim Ragones and Sapir Karabello. They do far more than you already know. Also, an enormous shout out to the person behind the scenes who does all of the enhancing, Levi Genesove!
One other thing earlier than we begin. We didn’t select these high 10 as the most effective issues that got here out of the podcast in 2019. It’s not like that. Mordy selected these high 10 moments as both as a result of they have been one thing that caught out as a novel and tangible idea, as a result of the content material match the format of this sort of episode, or there was an fascinating background story to the query, and many others.
This Top 10 listing shouldn’t be a hierarchy of awesomeness as there are various episodes not on this listing that we advocate you hearken to. We can be remiss if we didn’t point out our interview with Jason Barnard on the underpinnings of structured knowledge or the episode that includes Aleyda Sodis who spoke about the way to be an SEO guide. We can’t overlook Stephan Spencer, who took us to a non secular place in his understanding of the way to develop an SEO group. A private favourite of Mordy’s that wasn’t included in the Top 10 was with Kameron Jenkins the place they spoke concerning the full-stack content material author that may deal with every part and our interview with Craig Campbell on black hat SEO.
Here, in no sequential order by date, significance, or in any other case are the most effective moments from The In Search SEO Podcast in 2019!
1. Andrew Optimisey: Big Brand Sense of Security on the SERP
Mordy: So, at present we’re going to speak about manufacturers. Specifically, what small-sized and medium-sized manufacturers can do to remain aggressive on the SERP.
Where I’m coming from is that Google has some important unhealthy press to take care of whether or not it’s privateness issues, pretend information, and many others. For Google, large manufacturers are protected. Google is aware of that for bigger manufacturers no matter content material they put out goes to be protected in that it’s correct and authoritative. With that premise in thoughts what “esteem” do big brands hold in the eyes of Google these days? Has their stock gone up? Why/why not?
Andrew: Certainly, I understand that smaller businesses can feel overwhelmed by the bigger brands wondering how can they ever beat them on the SERP. I agree that Google is favoring the big sites, but my take is that Google hates being wrong. So the reason they favor big brands is that it’s a safer bet for Google. Most people are happy with these big brands on the SERP as they have brand familiarity. Some SEOs say, “The new key phrase is model.” People need to know who you might be earlier than you pop up in the search outcomes. If customers see well-known manufacturers on the SERP why would they select you?
Listen to the total interview with Andrew Optimisey
2. Barry Schwartz: On Negativity in the SEO World
Mordy: Does it ever get to you… You are so calm and so affected person and good-natured… however beneath all of it does “it” get to you? What I mean is you have 100s of people, like this yutz right here, who send you all sorts of SERP feature updates (most of which are old), you have people critiquing you for nonsense, you have all sorts of misconceptions and so forth… does it get to you?
Barry: Yeah, I do try to moderate them, more now these days. I don’t run when people attack me, but when people attack other personalities and other people by saying childish things, calling people names and making fun of people, that’s just childish, right? But in general, it really doesn’t get to me. I’ve been doing this for so long that I’ve become numb to it all. None of this stuff bothers me at all. In fact, so much so that I kind of enjoy trolling the trolls.
Listen to the full interview with Barry Schwartz
3. Cindy Krum: What are Fraggles?
[Editor’s note: Google has said that they do not index content in the manner described below. Still, the idea is interesting and the clip is a fun one!]
Cindy: Before we go I want to talk about fraggles. I’ve been noticing more ‘jump links’ in the search results where Google will have a blue link title tag and underneath it will say “Jump To” and in the meta description it can present the piece that solutions your query and never the meta description itself. So fraggle is a phrase I made up that takes fragment and deal with and places them collectively. So now Google can single out your content material and what it desires to index. I believe mobile-first indexing is entity-first indexing however entities don’t want URLs to allow them to simply take fraggles. Now think about the Google crawler crawling round taking simply fraggles. It crawls the identical, however in another way. So they may save the URL with a location modifier as a result of it jumps straight to it on the web page. This additionally contains API indexing and database indexing the place these items don’t have URLs. They have a singular locator in the file to allow them to get simply what they need and index that to the Knowledge Graphs and go away the remainder.
Mordy: So that is much like Google utilizing AMP URLs as an alternative of Featured Snippets.
Cindy: Exactly. That is an illustration of how fraggles work. That highlighting isn’t from the AMP web page. So what they do when it’s not a Google web page in the fraggle is that they create a deal with in their mind about scrolling and scroll straight to it. And generally there are leap hyperlinks on the web page however they don’t need to be.
Listen to the total interview with Cindy Krum
4. Alli Berry: Defining E-A-T
Mordy: Neat! Let’s begin off a bit basic, how do you go about creating experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T)? What are some “musts?”
Alli: It’s funny. I feel EAT is kind of squishy as when you create expertise you’re creating authoritativeness and trust at the same time. They’re all related. What matters in all three is having experts creating your content or at least involved in your content process. People who know what they’re talking about will create better content than your SEO content marketing team who is trying to learn finance.
For authoritativeness, what matters is showing your expertise. Having really good bio pages for all of your content creators. Having a really strong About page that says who you are, what you are about, and why people should trust you. You can also add if your company won awards, or if your employees won awards, or customer testimonials.
From a trustworthy perspective, making sure your site is secure is a no-brainer. Having really good quality links is a huge trust component if other sources are linking to you as an expert. And having error-free content goes a long way.
Mordy: Wow, thank you. I think that’s the first time I had someone break down each component of E-A-T.
Listen to the full interview with Alli Berry
5. Igal Stolpner: On Qualitative Competitor Analysis
Mordy: From speaking on quantity I want to jump to quality.
Let me ask, we spend a lot of time talking about identifying competitors from a quantitative perspective. So and so sells more than I do or such and such site ranks higher than I do. And we have all sorts of tools to help us identify our competitors from a quantitative perspective. However, I feel this is a big problem. It’s very easy to rely on a tool to point out your competition from a quantitative perspective, but how do you pull out your competitors from a qualitative perspective?
That is, how do you qualify the “menace degree” of a competitor at scale? How do you verify the extent of potential issues a competitor might trigger you at scale? For instance, a instrument can let you know who’s rating above you, however it might’t actually let you know if the site visitors that web site earns would have actually gone to you had you ranked larger because it’s completely doable that your web site wouldn’t meet consumer wants regardless of rating larger on the SERP.
Or, simply to supply one other instance, a web site might rank nicely forward of you, however have a horrible UX that causes customers to bounce. Why dedicate a lot to outdoing a web site that isn’t really stealing any of your small business?!
How do you have a look at competitor evaluation from a qualitative perspective?
Igal: First, we now have to have a look at how do SEO instruments determine rivals. These instruments don’t know every part, they simply see what’s on the SERP. So if these web sites are repeatedly seen subsequent to mine then they’re extra more likely to be my rivals. Very typically this technique works or not less than it’s an incredible place to begin, however you must do extra analysis.
Very typically I’ll see SEOs solely have a look at the instruments with out doing extra analysis like registering to the competitor’s web site, studying their content material, shopping for from the location, and even taking part in round to see their true options and true worth.
And you’re proper in what you stated. You might rank larger however is that your important enterprise objective? In the tip, it’s all concerning the enterprise objectives. This is the place it begins. You have to attach the SEO rivals from a SERP perspective to what is smart for your small business.
By the way in which, you talked about UX, and I agree it’s one thing that’s being missed in search. And I’m not speaking about whether or not a button is orange or inexperienced, greater or smaller. It’s about the entire expertise. As SEOs, we do perceive this as it’s a part of who we’re, however we have to look just a little deeper. Maybe we should always sit with the product group and perceive the options higher. Ask your self, “Is that truly an opportunity or is this even a threat?”
And think of how many times you see a website you think is your competitor, but your company’s board of directors don’t even care about this website. You need to connect with others in your business to hold these things together.
Listen to the full interview with Igal Stolpner
6. Mark Traphagen: How a Diverse Professional Background Benefits Your SEO Practices
Mordy: I’m really thrilled that you’re here. So I heard a rumor that you used to teach?
Mark: Yes, I was a classroom teacher for over 15 years.
Mordy: Wow. I used to be a teacher for 3 years. It was another lifetime ago.
Mark: Do you feel that was good preparation for what you do now?
Mordy: 100%. What I do here is educate. It’s all about breaking down complex information so that it’s accessible to people.
Mark: I feel exactly the same way. The classroom training and having to be on every day not only helps with things like speaking at conferences and writing content but also with interacting with clients.
Mordy: Yeah, my educational background has done wonders with who I am now. I still view myself as a teacher. It’s great how we can take what we learned as teachers and bring it to the SEO world.
Listen to the full interview with Mark Traphagen
7. Liraz Postan: Which KPIs Should You Focus on?
Mordy: So let’s talk about metrics. There are so many KPIs out there to determine how your content is doing. When looking at content marketing what KPIs do you consider to be vanity metrics?
Liraz: What I look for is raw pages. This is how I know my content performs. Then I look at downloads or registered users, any type of conversion that shows how my content is doing. I would say the number of engagements is a vanity metric.
Mordy: How do you separate out metrics like bounce rate, time on page, etc. when dealing with various types of content as they don’t equally apply to each content category? For example, if your webpage is a short paragraph then the time on page will be much less then let’s say a medical article.
Liraz: First I group different types of content and then compare the metrics for each one. For example, some content should have a higher bounce rate and some more interactive content should have more engagement. So let’s say I have an interactive quiz inside my blog post I will see the analytics of more people on the site and engaged, but when it comes to other blog posts they will be judged by other metrics and I try to group them in my reporting.
Listen to the full interview with Liraz Postan
8. Carolyn Lyden: Using a Content Matrix for Content Success!
Mordy: When I used to teach there was this idea of “backwards” planning. You begin with the take a look at and the questions you need the scholars to have the ability to reply and solely then create “content” (i.e., lesson plans) to ensure the lessons hit on those questions. This, of course, sounds like a great idea when creating a content pillar. Except when creating a “instructing unit” the method typically results in a stifling of creativity and to a specific amount of inflexibility. Obviously, having an finish objective in thoughts is essential, however to what extent must you “backwards” plan when developing a content pillar? How effective is it to first think about what channels you want to “hit” and with what kind of content material? Are there are any pitfalls to watch out of when doing so?
Carolyn: In my earlier job the SEO division was separate from the content material division and this occurred on a regular basis. The SEO division would inform us, “You need to hit these bullet points. You need keywords in your titles. And this and that.” But the content team was saying, “We need freedom! We should be artistic! You’re stifling us!” So we needed to discover a solution to meet in the center the place the SEO bins have been checked however the content material group felt that they’d the liberty and was not simply transcribing what the SEO group wished. One means we discovered center floor was with the content material matrix. As I stated earlier, each quarter we’d have a separate theme that targets particular teams and for every of these teams we’ll give you a bunch of ache factors. And we’ll go and ask individuals about their precise ache factors in order to know what really resonates with individuals. So now we now have a objective of displaying these customers how our product/service solves these ache factors. With that in thoughts, we’ll create a pillar for every particular person audience. Then line out the ache factors in rows the place in a spreadsheet the pillars would be the columns and the ache factors the rows. Once you’ve this arrange now you can begin determining the way to reply these ache factors. And from there you could be as artistic as you need.
Listen to the total interview with Carolyn Lyden
9. Nati Elimelech: When Should You Consider SEO Automation?
Mordy: At what level do you weigh in the price of a instrument versus the time it saves you?
Nati: How are you with numbers? Do you want math?
Mordy: I’ve a calculator so go forward.
Nati: This would possibly shock you. Let’s calculate how a lot time menial duties actually take. Let’s speak about testing web page velocity scores (and we’ll assume it issues as a lot as individuals suppose it does). So Mordy, how lengthy do you suppose it can take to check web page velocity?
Mordy: A few seconds.
Nati: Ah, however in actuality, it takes longer. I can let you know that everybody thinks that quite a lot of duties take solely 5-10 minutes. People suppose {that a} activity takes much less time than they really do. It’s referred to as the Planning Fallacy.
Let’s breakdown what it’s good to do when testing web page velocity rating. We suppose it’s just one motion, however when damaged down it’s actually quite a lot of smaller actions. What’s step one in the method?
Mordy: Load the URL into the instrument.
Nati: Right, however step one is to open a instrument like Google Drive and get the URL it’s good to monitor. You want to seek out the file, discover the URL on the listing, and that may be two minutes. Next, you must open the Page Speed Insight instrument, paste the URL, and begin the audit. An audit can take from 30 seconds to over a minute. And all that may take let’s say one other two-three minutes. Next, you get the rating and document it. Then based mostly on the rating you must do one thing. Let’s say if it’s lower than 65 on cellular, you’ll have somebody from the tech group take a look. To begin that, you have to to ship the tech particular person an e-mail, or arrange a activity in your venture administration system, and assign it to the proper particular person. And that step can take about seven minutes. So to sum up, that’s 20 minutes per URL. In the tip, if you wish to monitor 100 URLs per week, that’s 8,000 minutes of labor time monthly or over 130 hours! That’s nearly a fulltime job! In our company, we monitor hundreds of URLs.
If you do it proper, scale doesn’t matter. You can analyze 100, or a thousand URLs the identical time it takes to investigate only one. That’s the purpose of SEO automation in my opinion.
Listen to the total interview with Nati Elimelech
10. Greg Gifford: What Image Size Should You Use for Google Posts?
Mordy: There’s been quite a lot of speak about what pictures and picture sizes work greatest for Google Posts. I personally have heard not less than 3 completely different suggestions on it. Can you compromise this as soon as and for all? What sized pictures must you use in Google Posts?
Greg: See, the issue is when Posts first got here out they’d a special dimension measurement. So lots of people instantly made movies and weblog posts saying “this” is the size and no one really updated it since. We did a lot of testing after it was changed and the ideal size now is 1200×900 pixels. That’s the best size that will fill the window and is the closest to what will appear so you can have a little more control over what’s visible after it’s cropped.
Listen to the full interview with Greg Gifford
11. Niki Mosier: What Local SERP Features Are We Glossing Over?
Mordy: Can you share another element within Google’s local SERP features that businesses fail to capitalize on? For example, one that stands out to me is events. Department stores like Macy’s do a great job here: if they have a makeup artist coming in they list it as an event or if they’re having a cologne sampling they are listed as events.
Because there are so many different elements within the local features what are businesses missing the boat on?
Niki: Yeah, you really hit the nail on the head with events. I and some other people on Twitter had trouble with events getting to populate with event schema just because there are so many nuances to it. I’m definitely finding that things like Eventbrite and MeetUp are pulling into the listing pretty automatically which is nice. And there’s been a recent post on Search Engine Land that anyone can post an event to a Google My Business listing from the Contributor Dashboard (Android only) and that’s a little scary.
Videos are definitely underused in Google My Business and Google loves videos being displayed in the SERP especially videos from YouTube showing up in the search results. Putting video on your Google My Business Listing is a great way to give users a full idea of what they’re going to experience when they walk through your door so it’s a great win-win.
And the Products and Services Menu I think that’s pretty underused. Companies like Home Depot and REI do a really great job of adding in their product feed which I believe can come in through the API and pull in their products into the Google My Business listing on mobile. But looking at Home Service businesses and I think there’s a real opportunity to get more of that information out in front of users. Obviously, restaurants do a good job having their menu In the listing, but for service menus I feel there’s an opportunity to utilize it more fully.
Listen to the full interview with Niki Mosier
Tune in next January seventh for a brand new episode of The In Search SEO Podcast!
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