Announcing the 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors Results |
- Announcing the 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors Results
- Giving a Voice to Your Brand
- A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization
| Announcing the 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors Results Posted: 07 Aug 2013 01:16 AM PDT Posted by David Mihm I'm pleased to announce the full results of this year's Local Search Ranking Factors survey were published earlier this morning. (The pie chart below is just a teaser.) Those of you who attended MozCon a couple weeks ago got a sneak preview of these results, but I'm guessing that few of you had a chance to fully digest them in the 14.2 seconds I spent on the slides in which I presented them. Let's dive in! If this is the first time you've heard of the Local Search Ranking Factors, most of the background can be found on the results page itself. I'll highlight a couple of changes for this year:
By and large, the primary factors seem to have stayed largely the same for the past couple of years:
Though I wanted to give the other 34 experts "the floor" on the survey page itself, I do want to comment about a couple of responses I found particularly interesting:
A couple of quick closing remarks: Huge thanks to Derric Wise from UX/Design and Devin Ellis on our Inbound Engineering team for putting this beautiful-looking page together. And, if you want to know more about this year's survey, I would encourage you to sign up for Local University Advanced at SMX East coming up in just a few weeks. I'll be speaking much more about tactics you can use to win on these factors in New York! OK, that's enough out of me for this year's survey, anyway. As I do every year, I'm eagerly anticipating the discussion of the results in the comments! 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: 06 Aug 2013 07:38 PM PDT Posted by gfiorelli1 Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell. More human than human is our motto. Those who had not heard of storytelling cast the first stone. And those who are not thinking of it, or maybe have already begun to speak in-house or with their customers that it is necessary to give a voice to their brands, cast the second. The question is, do we really know what "brand storytelling" means? Do we really know why it is important for increasing brand recognition, optimizing customer retention, and (hopefully) attain that status of thought leaders in our niche that we all aspire to achieve? Do we really understand why it is also important from an SEO point of view? Finally, do we really know the rhetoric of storytelling â€" the laws behind a good narrative? The truth is that everyone can tell a story, but only a few know how to tell it well and naturally. Fortunately, it is an art that can be learned. StorytellingStories and irrational impulses are what change behavior. Not facts or bullet points. One of the things that surprises me most when it comes to us, the internet marketers, is that we still often tend to think analogically: Having A, doing B, performing C, I will obtain D. I have a product, I write some "great content," I promote it, and people will come like bees attracted to a field of flowers. Unfortunately, things are not so anymore. To tell the truth, they were never so. Our mistake, paraphrasing Seth Godin, is that we tend to create nothing but bullet points and present nothing but facts. We forget that our audience reacts to everything specifically because of its emotions, so we don’t really work on those emotions, which are rationalized in just a moment. The secret of storytelling is not in its final expressions (so many in a digital era) but in the act itself of telling a story. Telling stories is what helps human beings rationalize and understand emotions, and thus accept or refuse a statement. For this reason, humankind has told stories since it was living in the caves of Altamira or Lascaux. Culture was transmitted though stories, legends, and myths; religions and states have been founded on stories. The 300 Spartans fought against the immense Persian army at Thermopylae not just because Leonidas guided them or because they were the bravest warriors of ancient Greece, but especially because a mythology composed by hundreds of stories assured them they were the descendants of Heracles. Citing the Big Fish character of Wil Bloom, "a man tells so many stories that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal." For this reason we love family stories, and for this reason we relate to brands with stories we lived while using and enjoying them. Think for a moment about your youth, and you will notice how you can write down a never-ending list of brands you remember because of the emotions they helped you feel. Personally, if I think to when I was a teenager in the '80s, I cannot help but remember brands like Commodore, Atari, Saba (the first color television my family bought) and many others. Neuroscience explains quite well how evolution has wired us for storytelling, as Leo Widrich of Buffer explained so well on LifeHacker. But the most interesting conclusion neuroscience offers to us is that the brain of the storyteller and the brain of their listeners start acting in synchronization when a story is told, as the same areas of their brain start being used. There are other interesting theories, including Jung's conclusions about archetypes and myths, and if you want to dig into how to use literary modes for internet marketing you can read this post I wrote a few months ago. Brand storytellingStorytelling, then, is possibly the best way to convince a person of something, whether it be voting for a candidate for president, choosing one religion over another, adhering to certain moral conduct, or buying one product rather than another. I can already hear the distant murmur of a thousand voices saying, "But the product that I have to sell is a bolt!" Once again, that's the shortsighted mistake of seeing only the end result and forgetting everything that led to its creation. We stop ourselves at the what and forget the why and the how. What do you think of when I mention Red Bull? I am sure that you think about adventure, extreme sport, and a crazy guy who skydived from the stratosphere. And what if I mention Lucozade? Maybe if you are into energy drinks you know of it, but I am quite sure that many of you, as was my case, have just now heard its name for the first time. The products are practically the same: bottles and cans of energy drinks. Red Bull, though, has been able to create stories around its brand while Lucozade has not. And people love stories that respond to their needs, desires, and dreams. As reported by Ty Montague on Medium, Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red Bull, explained the reasoning behind the tagline Red Bull gives you wings: "[it] means that it provides skills, abilities, power, etc., to achieve whatever you want to. It is an invitation as well as a request to be active, performance-oriented, alert and to take challenges. When you work or study, do your very best. When you do sports, go for your limits. When you have fun or just relax, be aware of it and appreciate it." Red Bull, hence, proposes itself as a lifestyle and not just an energy drink. For that reason, its Brand is far more memorable than Lucozade. Where to startThere is a world of stories hidden in the About Us and Mission pages (it's a shame that those are usually hidden in the footer menu). The biggest mistake a marketer can make is not understanding that brands are the final expression of a company, and that a company is just something real people created in order to achieve something (which usually isn't "making money"). Let's check out a few examples:
Missions are an expression of the values that guide a company and are the ethical basis of its stories (the how). The protagonists of those stories are not only the company's products, but also (and especially) the people who use, live with, and make those products their own. The Blues Brothers had a mission. What about you? The schema of brand storytellingEven the simplest story has very sophisticated mechanisms working behind the scenes. The listeners don't always see them, but they know them and expect them to be present. If they aren't present, they won’t laugh when they are meant to laugh or cry when they are meant to cry. In his essay Ars Poetica, the Greek philosopher Aristotle described the six elements of every story:
PlotIt is thanks to Aristotle that we usually say a plot must have a beginning, middle, and an end, and that events of the plot must causally relate to one another as being either necessary or probable. Most importantly, a plot must arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience. In this simple scheme, the middle is especially important, because after the status quo is introduced in the beginning, during this phase we have:
After those events, the end usually represents the establishment of a new, better status quo. From a brand storytelling point of view, the plot is the how, as in how the values of the brand (its why) responds to the needs of its audience. For instance, using Moz as an example, the mission of helping people do better marketing is fulfilled by the creation of tools built under the spirit of the mission tenets (the TAGFEE principles), which respond to the needs of every kind of internet marketer. The community, whose knowledge encompasses every discipline of inbound marketing, responds by using those tools. This is the main plot line of Moz. Characters and themeIntrinsically related to the plot are the characters and the theme. The main characters are the heroes of the stories, whose actions determine the plot of the story. The secondary ones are those who provide the main characters with information, materials, goods, services, or whatever is needed to advance the plot. Using Moz as an example again, the main character is the user â€" maybe someone who has just started her adventure in internet marketing â€" while the secondary characters are the products and (this being the characteristic of every business with a strong, active community) the Mozzers. Users and brands, therefore, are the characters of every brand story, with the users being the main characters. With the users as the main characters, it is then easy to understand how important is to know them as well as possible before, during, and after the release of a product. Hence the strategic importance of personas, audience targeting, the continuous feedback from the users, and the post-sale follow-ups and growth hacking. The theme is the universe where the plot takes place, and the laws governing that universe in brand storytelling are the tenets (for instance, the TAGFEE tenets), which make the rules with which the mission will be achieved explicit. This universe is usually an ideal world the users would love to live in, because it offers the answers to their needs, and it is a universe that only the brand can offer them. The brand universe can be totally mythical â€" a representation of reality as we want it. Diction, rhythm, and spectacleOnce the plot, the characters, and the theme are set up, we can start thinking about the diction, rhythm, and spectacle. Diction is the expression of meaning in words, and it is a consequence of the tone and style. In brand storytelling, and here SEOs may play a great role, diction is not just how the brand talks to the users, but also the creation of brand language where the language spoken by users is enriched by those that Dan Shure brilliantly defined as Propwords. MozCon, MozBot, Roger, Whiteboard Friday, Mozinar, Mozzers, and many others are the propwords of Moz, which are immediately understood and appropriated by the users. Diction is what helps create a indissoluble relationship between keywords and the brand, creating the so-called branded keywords. Rhythm is usability. When we narrate a story we always use an underlying rhythm, which helps the story flow so the listeners won't notice the rhetorical mechanisms behind the story itself. Finally, spectacle is the organization of appearances that are simultaneously enticing, deceptive, and superficial. The web expression of spectacle is graphic design. Examples of brand storytellingDumb Ways to DieThe Metro Trains public company of Melbourne (Australia) had one thing clear: people don't pay attention to signs and recorded messages. So, in order to ensure its message about how we all must pay attention when in the metro station was heard, and thereby diminish the cases of accidents due to distraction, Metro Trains decided to produce a song â€" Dumb Ways to Die â€" and launch it on YouTube. What happened after is the story of maybe the best case of transmedia brand storytelling ever created until now.
Spread the TEDx, Buenos AiresWe all know about TED Talks, and maybe many of you have attended one of the community-generated events called TEDx. Well, TED Talks had a problem in Buenos Aires: Not many people there knew what the heck a TEDx was, simply because no one had the ability to explain it to them. So, consistent with its mission that there are ideas worth spreading, TEDx decided to use what could have been its best brand ambassadors, the taxi drivers:
NIKE â€" Find Your GreatnessNIKE has done brand storytelling since before the existence of the internet, but its "Find Your Greatness" campaign was the first held entirely without buying classic television ad spaces. Instead, it used all the possible digital channels could to make its story, based on its "if you have a body, you are an athlete" principle, touch its audience.
Oreo Daily TwistOreo is the classic brand that we tend to associate with little memorable moments of our daily lives. It reminds us of when we were kids and having breakfast, and the simple emotions attached to those memories is able â€" because of the way our brain works â€" to make us remember other unrelated events. Based on this simple idea, Oreo created the Daily Twist campaign.
ConclusionsWhen doing brand storytelling, if we follow the principle of narrative described above, we will be able to design an ongoing conversation with our users, who â€" and this is the great difference between analogical brand storytelling and digital one â€" will start creating new stories related to the brand. Here is where inbound marketing, in its core meaning of creating brand stories and presenting them to the right audience in the right place and at the right time, gains a bigger meaning. And here is where branding and SEO collide, because all the stories we tell will compose our story, and all the stories we tell will help us create our unavoidable existence as an online entity (and you should already know what that means in the eyes of Google, both right now and in the future). As Tracey Halvorsen put very well: "Today, more than ever before in the history of modern civilization, individuals [and brands â€" my annotation] are empowered with the tools to be storytellers and the technology to see their stories spread far and wide in the blink of an eye." 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! |
| A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization Posted: 06 Aug 2013 02:27 AM PDT Posted by randfish How do I build the perfectly optimized page?This is a challenging question for many in the SEO and web marketing fields. There are hundreds of "best practices" lists for where to place keywords and how to do "on-page optimization," but as search engines have evolved and as other sources of traffic â€" social networks, referring links, email, blogs, etc. â€" have become more important and interconnected, the very nature of what's "optimal" is up for debate. My perspective is certainly not gospel, but it's informed by years of experience, testing, failure, and learning alongside a lot of metrics from Moz's phenomenal data science team. I don't think there's one absolute right way to optimize a page, but I do think I can share a lot about the architecture of how to target content and increase the likelihood that it will:
With the help of some graphics from CreativeMarket (which I highly recommend), I created a number of visualizations to explain how I think about modern on-page optimization and keyword targeting. Let's start with a graphical overview of what makes a page optimized: In the old days of SEO, "on-page optimization" referred merely to keyword placement. Search engines liked to see keywords in certain locations of the HTML code to help indicate a page's relevance for that query. But today, this simple approach won't cut it for two key reasons:
Below is a pie-chart breakdown of how the 128 SEO professionals surveyed for Moz's annual ranking factors project rated broad algorithmic elements' impact in Google: If <15% of the rankings equation is wrapped up in keyword targeting, no wonder smart SEOs in the modern era have evolved to think more holistically. Personally, I'm happy to sacrifice "perfect" keyword placement in the title element or a URL for better user experience, a higher chance of having my content shared on social networks, or a better click-through rate in the search results. But, for the purposes of this post, let's put some of those caveats aside and dive into the best practices for each element of a page. It may be unwise to optimize all of these purely towards search engine-based best practices, but we can temper the advice with notes on usability and user experience for visitors, too. Below, I've attempted to go tag by tag, and element by element through the keyword targeting and on-page optimization canon to expand on the more basic advice in the "Elements of an Optimized Page" graphic above. Uniquely valuableAn optimized page doesn't just provide unique content, but unique value. What's the difference?
Whenever I advise marketers on crafting pages, I ask them to put themselves in the minds of their potential visitors, and imagine a page that provides something so different and functional that it rises above everything else in its field. Here are a few of my favorite examples:
Unique value is much more than unique content, and when you have a page that rises to the level that these do, social shares, links, and all the other positive associations, branding, and ranking signals are apt to follow. Provides phenomenal UXA user's experience is made up of a vast array of elements, not unlike the search engines' ranking algorithms. Satisfying all of these perfectly may not be possible, but reaching for a high level will not only provide value in rankings, but through second-order impacts like shares, links, and word-of-mouth. At the most basic level, a great UX means the page/site is:
Smashing Magazine has my favorite article on the subject: What is User Experience Design? Overview, Tools, and Resources. Crawler/bot accessibleSearch engines still crawl the web using automated bots, and probably will for at least the next decade or more. While there have been plenty of leaps in the sophistication level of these crawlers, the best practice is not to take chances and follow some important guidelines when building pages you want engines to crawl, index, and rank reliably:
Geoff Kenyon's Technical Site Audit Checklist is still one of the best resources for those seeking more in-depth information about crawler-based accessibility. Keyword-targetedAs I mentioned in the opening of this post, it may be the case that perfectly optimized keyword targeting conflicts with goals around usability, user experience, or the natural flow of how you write. That's OK, and frequently, I'd suggest leaning in those more user-centric directions. However, when it's possible to optimize keyword usage, you'll need some ammunition. Here's a look at the most important elements as we've observed them through time, testing, correlation, and listening to the engine's recommendations, too. 7 important keyword targeting elements (and 1 not-so-important element)#1: Page title Using the primary keyword phrase at least once in the page's title, and preferably as close to the start of the title tag/element as possible is highly recommended. Not only are titles key to how engines weigh relevance, they also dramatically impact a searcher's propensity to click. Above is an example comparing some title elements for the search query "lip balm." The tag for allure.com is more compelling from the perspective of fulfilling the searcher's intent (which is likely to compare multiple blams vs. find a specific one), but it also puts the keyword in prime, eye-catching real estate on the results page. We have seen evidence and heard the engines themselves discuss the value/importance of earning clicks and preventing "pogo-sticking" (the bouncing of a visitor back to a search page after clicking a result). Optimizing for both keyword prominence AND user intent/visibility is an excellent idea. #2: Headline While we've seen mixed results over the years with using the H1 tag specifically for keyword placement, it's almost certainly the case that a searcher who's just clicked on a results expects to see a matching headline on the page they visit. Failure to do so may increase the odds of pogo-sticking, and our most recent rank correlations suggest that a topically relevant H1 is associated with higher rankings. I wouldn't always require a match between the title and the H1 precisely, but they shouldn't be so dissimilar as to drive anyone who's clicked away from the result. #3: Body text It should come as no surprise that using your primary (and secondary, if relevant) keyword phrase(s) in the content of the page are important. Our research suggests that it's not just about raw keyword use or repetition, though. Search engines are almost certainly using advanced topic modeling algorithms to assess relevance and perhaps quality, too. This means it's wise to make your content comprehensive, useful, and relevant as possible, not just filled with instance of a keyword. In fact, we've observed plenty of cases where the overuse of keywords resulted in a negative impact on rankings, so be judicious. If you asked a non-marketing friend to read the page, would they get the sense that a term or phrase was suspiciously prominent, sometimes needlessly so? If that's the case, you're probably overdoing it. #4: URL A good URL has a few key aspects, but one of those is keyword use. Not only does it help with search engine relevancy directly, but URLs often get used as anchor text around the web (mostly through copying and pasting). For example, if I link to this post using its URL, e.g. http://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization, the phrases "keyword targeting" and "onpage optimization" appear right in the text. For more best practices on URLs, check out our learn article on the topic. #5: Images and image alt attributes Having images on a keyword-targeted page is wise for many, many reasons, not least among them is that these can help directly and indirectly with rankings. Most directly, your image has an opportunity to show up in an image search result. Granted, Google's new interface has dramatically lowered the traffic from image search, but I still find great value in having your brand name/site associated with production of useful graphics, photos, and visual elements. For search engines, the image's title, filename, surrounding text, and alt attribute all matter from a ranking perspective. In particular, those doing SEO should know that when an image is linked, the alt attribute is treated similarly to anchor text in a text link. #6: Internal and external links A good page should be accessible through no more than four clicks from any other page on a site (three for smaller sites), and it should, likewise, provide useful links to relevant information on any topics that are discussed. Some SEOs have, in the past, questioned whether linking externally, especially to sites/pages that might compete for a visitor's time/attention or a search engine's rankings is wise. I believe the nail in that coffin was delivered by Marshall Simmonds in his Whiteboard Friday Interview noting the value the NYTimes saw from their implementation of external links. Since then, search engine representatives have subtly hinted on multiple occasions that there are elements in the algorithm which reward external links to quality sites/pages. #7: Meta description A page's meta description isn't used directly in search engine ranking algorithms (according to representatives from Google and Bing), but that doesn't mean they're not critical. The meta description tag, if it employs the keyword query, usually shows up in the search results, and is part of what searchers consider when deciding whether to click. As you can see from the snippet above, when keywords appear in the meta description, they also get bolded, which can help with visibility. The primary goal of a meta description should be to earn the searcher's click. Think of them like ad copy, and work to make searchers care about your page. #8: Meta keywords Notably absent from this list is the Meta Keywords tag, which Google does not use in rankings, and we, along with many others (including SearchEngineLand) recommend against employing on your pages. ----------- The reason it's so important to balance these keyword-targeting demands with other attributes of on-page optimization is illustrated below:
As you can see, while on-page features like keyword use in titles, keywords, and body text (even when measured via a more sophisticated and higher correlating model than just raw usage like our data science team did in the ranking factors) have reasonable correlations given the complexity of Google's rankings, other elements are found much more often in higher- vs. lower-ranking pages. If social shares, brand mentions, links, and domain authority all potentially trump keyword-based factors as differentiators, marketers need to make sure we're hitting the basics of on-page, but never extending in such a way that interferes with our ability to succeed in these other avenues. Built to be shared through social networksFacebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, and dozens more social networks that are niche-focused can help earn signals that help rankings directly and/or indirectly (often through exposure to folks who might link to them). A well-optimized page should help to make social sharing as easy and seamless as possible, including:
Given how the reach of social networks have grown, how well social shares correlate positively to higher search rankings, and how those correlations have risen over time, there's a lot of value in making sure your pages have an opportunity to perform socially. Multi-device readyAlthough it was called out in the UX section, this principle is worthy of its own headline due to the increasing diversity of devices, browsers, and screen sizes. Mobile use isn't just critical for users "on the go." Many are using mobile or tablets to browse at home, at work, and as a replacement for laptop/desktop. And they're not just consuming â€" they're sharing! Social sharing in particular is a huge part of mobile & tablet functions, which means that if you're not optimized for all devices, you're missing critical opportunities for amplification to a broader audience. Inclusive of authorship, metadata, schema, and rich snippetsThere are a vast array of options that provide additional markup that engines may employ in their listings. Rather than try to list all of them, I'll link to resources with more information on each:
Moz's marketing scientist, Dr. Pete, recently put together a slide deck showing 90+ unique forms of search results, many of which leverage rich forms of markup (though only a few of these are in the control of the marketer/creator). My recommendation is to apply those that both match the opportunities provided by the engines and the techniques that will give value to your potential visitors. Be cautious of going overboard â€" there's a bit of rich snippet spam that serves only to leave a bad taste in searchers' mouths and may hurt your reputation or rankings with the engines themselves, too. Choosing how to optimizeOne important takeaway from this post should be that modern on-page SEO is about juggling competing priorities. In general, my recommended ordering of those priorities is as follows:
Over time, what's "perfect" might change, and new services, platforms, and areas of optimizational opportunity could arise. But for the past few years (notwithstanding some newer tactics like Google's rel=author), the model described in this post has held relatively stable. The "O" in SEO is getting broader, and I think that's a wonderful thing for marketers of all stripes. Targeting an algorithm instead of people is far worse than hitting both birds with the same handful of optimization stones. p.s.: If you have feedback or suggestions on items to include, please feel free to suggest them in the comments. 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! |
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