seo for-bloggers-2014
DESCRIPTION
What Bloggers Need to Know About SEO in 2014TRANSCRIPT
Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | [email protected]
What Bloggers Need to Know About
SEO in 2014
This Presentation Is Online Here:
bit.ly/blogseo2014
Topics in this Presentation:
Why Invest in SEO?
Keyword Research
Content Creation
Amplification
Link Building
Go Ahead, Break the Rules
Be Wary of Snake Oil
Universal Blogging Truth
Slides 4-10
Slides 11-30
Slide 31-46
Slides 47-54
Slides 55-75
Slides 76-80
Slides 81-86
Slides 87-96
Given the rise of social media, mobile apps, & content marketing, why bother with SEO?
Why?
Because Search Continues to Grow Massively
Almost 6 Billion queries/day
Distribution of Search Clicks
~20% of clicks go to ads
~80% of clicks go to organic results (SEO)
Search Intent vs. Social Intent
“Do Things” Mode “Browse” Mode
The Rise of Mobile Search
Google’s suggested 2015 will be the year mobile searches surpass desktop searches (and desktop’s still growing itself, just slower!)
Source: Statcounter
Early Adopter Advantage
Ranking here today means you earn traffic, links, brand awareness, press, and all the things that help you rank better in the future.
Turning the SEO Flywheel
Publish
Amplify
Grow network Rank for slightly more competitive terms & phrases
Get links Grow authority
Earn search traffic
When you share a common language with your audience, everyone benefits.
Keyword Research
What Happens Without Keyword ResearchHow People Search
How You Write
Ranks #125 (page 13) for “great barrier
reef tours”
What Happens With Keyword Research
Hotel we stayed at nailing their blog
content’s rankings!
Google’s Improving at Intent Matching
But they Will Never Get Here:
No offense intended, but these are not among the
best travel blogs.
Start Research by Brainstorming
What searches, if people performed them and found you, would be most likely to bring you new lifelong fans?
What are some words and phrases people commonly use to describe the broad focus areas of your blog?
What searches that are relevant to your posts do you wish you had the #1 ranking for?
If you had to make new content to reach the largest, relevant audience to your blog, what would your write about?
Use Tools to Expand Your Ideas & Align Them With
How People Search
https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
You can bolster these with suggestions from the
engines
Eventually, You Want a List of Targets
A spreadsheet like this (or an even simpler one without difficulty, ranking, or volume) can nudge you to take be mindful
and actionable about your blog’s SEO
Some KWs Are Worth Long Term Pursuit
For Moz, this phrase is critical to our thought leadership and community building efforts
Others Are Simply How You Optimize a Post
While I’m bummed our post didn’t rank for this exact phrase, it does rank for variants and we can always try again with another
post in the future.
When Writing a Post, 3mins is All I Ask
First 60 Seconds Next 60 Seconds Last 60 Seconds
Use tools or suggest to figure out which KW
phrase to target
Note some of the additional terms &
phrases that can help you be relevant for additional search
queries
Try to employ the key terms in the title of
your post, and use the additional queries in the title and body of
the post in a sensible, readable way.
Let’s say I want to
write a blog post
about the most evil
characters in
Shakespeare’s
plays…
I’d start by looking at how people search for
words & phrases around this topic:
I might compare relative search volume:
I’d choose a primary phrase to target and
some additional terms to go after as well:
Primary Phrase: “Shakespeare’s Villains”
Secondary Terms: Evil CharactersList of Villains
QuotesShakespearean Villains
Villain Names
Then I’d try to write a headline that maximizes both
reader-appeal and KW-targeting:
Shakespeare’s Villains: The 22 Most Evil Characters from All 37 Plays
Not Too
Hard,
Right?
There are two paths bloggers can take to great content, but neither is easy or obvious.
Content Creation
Path 1: Publish to Help Your Audience
This post is clearly designed to help bloggers choose the right CMS
Path 2: Publish Your Passion(s)
This post was entirely self-indulgent and written
to share what I was thinking about at the time.
The Question Every
Content Creator Must
Ask:
Who Will Amplify this Content and
Why?
Who will amplify this cardboard sandwich?
Answer: Design Blogs & Gallery Sites!
Who’s Going to Promote Marty’s Post About
Rejecting Ivy League Schools?
Answer: College Selection Sites Fed Up w/ the Usual Suggestions
http://opensiteexplorer.org
Who will help this lovely cake spread?
Answer: Cake-obsessed Pinteresters!
Be Aware That Most
SEO Benefit Is
Earned in the First 24
Hours After Launch
Updating Old Content? You May Want to Re-
Publish and Redirect Instead:
If the content and value to visitors is largely the
same, consider consolidating to a single
resource
When it Comes to Optimizing Keyword Use,
Don’t Sweat Being Perfect
Don’t Do This
There Are General
Best Practices for
Making Content
SEO-Friendly:
More Details in
Rand’s Visual Guide to Optimizing Content
:
If You’re Prioritizing, I Recommend:
1) Make Yourself Proud – publish content you yourself believe in
and feel confident promoting.
2) Delight Your Audience – empathetically serve their needs.
Launch work they will want to share.
3) Make it Search Accessible – publish in such a way that search
engines can match your content to their searchers’ keywords and
intent.
Great bloggers make publishing neither the beginning nor the end of their process. They put it smack dab in the middle.
Amplification
The Publishing Process:
Content creation
Pre-publication outreach
Publish
Social media amplification
Post-publication outreach
Pre-Publication Outreach
Including the work/opinions, and/or soliciting feedback of potential amplifiers can be a powerful tool
Social Media Amplification
Post-Publication Outreach
Larry’s email to me after the publication of this piece results in my sharing it on Twitter, FB, and G+.
Which Social Networks?
Choose the platforms your
audience is using!
Source for this graphic
Don’t Ignore the Power of Engagement
There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that greater engagement on social
leads to future amplification & support
The best links are not built, but earned. Thankfully, there’s lots of ways to nudge
Link Building
What to Look For in a Link:
Can Send Relevant Traffic– linking sites don’t have to be “on-topic” to drive
relevant traffic, but the links themselves should be tied to potential visitor interest,
i.e. someone might actually click them
Editorial– the link should be given because the publisher/author truly wants to
endorse your site or the content of a page and not due to an exchange of
goods/services/money
Trustworthy Source– if the site(s) regularly links to low quality sites, is itself
sketchy, or can be influenced by anyone (open to link drops), the links you get
there may come with serious risk of a Google penalty
Links to Avoid:
Generic directories probably aren’t worthwhile
for most blogs (even Yahoo! and DMOZ, though
your mileage may vary)
Links to Avoid:
Most blog directories likely aren’t worthwhile either (and, like generic directories, some
could even be risky)
Links to Avoid:
In case the 80’s business people didn’t give it away, blog carnivals, blog rings, blog link wheels, & all similar
schemes are very high risk
On the Borderline:
Be thoughtful and cautious about sites
that openly solicit guest posts
On the Borderline:
Moz actually offers this! But we have an extremely tight editorial review process, and only publish highly
relevant, quality stuff
On the Borderline:
Social profiles can be valuable if you’re using the network, but if you’re simply
trying to get profiles that will have “dofollow” links for SEO rankings, there
may be risks
On the Borderline:
Forum profiles and posts are similar – if you’re really contributing, it’s OK. If you’re just there for
the link, trouble may follow.
Links to Chase After:
Most links to the content I publish online are from building up a social following of
interested folks and sharing
Links to Chase After:
Blogrolls and endorsements from friends, colleagues, and people who read and love
your site make great links
Links to Chase After:
Places like HARO & Profnet(10 sources here) can help ID
journalists in need of an expert for their story – they often love
including bloggers
Links to Chase After:
You don’t even need tools – find the names of the writers who publish
interviews/coverage of sites like yours and find ways to
help them
Links to Chase After:
Following social accounts of writers, journalists, bloggers,
and anyone who regularly produces web content can put
you in front of the right people at the right time
Links to Chase After:
Sometimes it’s easier to connect
with the sources the pros listen to then to
influence highly-followed social
accounts directly (this Followerwonk
report can help)
Links to Chase After:
Boom! These less-popular accounts are followed by hugely influential people. They
might be great targets.
Links to Chase After:
If you produce visual or embeddable content of any kind, use attribution licensing so sites can share
your stuff and link back to you
Links to Chase After:
Using this query format can bring up loads of
potential link opportunities
More Link Building Resources:
Link Building from the Moz
Blog
Paddy Moogan’s
Link Building eBook
Experts’ Favorite Link Building Tactics
How to Leverage PR for
Link Building
The Future of
Link Building
Don’t Worry About Spam You Don’t Control:
If you see spammy links in your profile that you didn’t create, don’t worry about them. If you see a lot and want to take
action, you can use Google Webmasters’ disavow tool.
DO WORRY About Spam You Created
If you’re guilty, fess up, disavow, try to remove the links, and send an honest
reconsideration request
Don’t let SEO constrain your creativity. Use it as a tool when you need it.
Go Ahead.Break the Rules.
Ignore Keywords Sometimes!
KeywordsWhatever whatevs
Publish Quietly If You Feel Like It
Ignore Outreach & Let Them Come to You
Ignore SEO Entirely & Focus On What You
Love About Blogging
Like most great opportunities, SEO has numerous pitfalls for would-be shortcut takers.
Be Wary ofSEO Snake Oil
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
If It Sounds Too Good to Be True, It Is
SEO Plugins for Blogs Can Be a Good Start,
But Aren’t the End All of SEO
Yoast’s Wordpress SEO is a great tool, and it can
help you avoid problems and capture opportunities, but it’s not a silver bullet!
One Universal Blogging Truth
Most of us (foolishly)
measure ourselves in
relation to the most
successful outliers:
A Short Story About Geraldine’s Blog
Geraldine’s Travel Blog: http://everywhereist.com
Geraldine started her blog in 2009
For 2 years, she never broke 100 visits/day.
This is where most people give up.
These days, she gets 100,000+ visits each month
Every “successful” blogger I’ve ever met has a story
that looks like this.
You are not alone.
The Price of Success is Failure after Failure after Failure** Hopefully, each of those failures provides an opportunity to learn.
