Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | rand@moz.com

What Startup Execs Need to

Know About SEO in 2017

Slides online atbit.ly/execseo2017

Google Dominates Online

Traffic Referrals#1

Where Do People Search?

Breakdown of Searches

on Major Web Properties

(October 2016)

Breakdown of Searches

on Major Web Properties

(May 2017)

Google Core

Oct 2016 May 2017

Google Images

Yahoo

Bing

Google Maps

Amazon

Facebook

Gained/Lost

58.9%

27.7%

2.6%

2.3%

2.2%

1.9%

0.7%

YouTube 3.8%

64.8%

21.8%

2.4%

2.4%

1.2%

2.3%

1.5%

3.6%

+5.9

-5.9

-0.2

+0.1

-1.0

+0.4

+0.8

-0.2

Google Core

Oct 2016 May 2017

Google Images

Yahoo

Bing

Google Maps

Amazon

Facebook

Gained/Lost

58.9%

27.7%

2.6%

2.3%

2.2%

1.9%

0.7%

YouTube 3.8%

64.8%

21.8%

2.4%

2.4%

1.2%

2.3%

1.5%

3.6%

+5.9

-5.9

-0.2

+0.1

-1.0

+0.4

+0.8

-0.2

We think this is

Halloween

Google Core

Oct 2016 May 2017

Google Images

Yahoo

Bing

Google Maps

Amazon

Facebook

Gained/Lost

58.9%

27.7%

2.6%

2.3%

2.2%

1.9%

0.7%

YouTube 3.8%

64.8%

21.8%

2.4%

2.4%

1.2%

2.3%

1.5%

3.6%

+5.9

-5.9

-0.2

+0.1

-1.0

+0.4

+0.8

-0.2This is compensated for by a rise in web

search clicks to local results

Google Core

Oct 2016 May 2017

Google Images

Yahoo

Bing

Google Maps

Amazon

Facebook

Gained/Lost

58.9%

27.7%

2.6%

2.3%

2.2%

1.9%

0.7%

YouTube 3.8%

64.8%

21.8%

2.4%

2.4%

1.2%

2.3%

1.5%

3.6%

+5.9

-5.9

-0.2

+0.1

-1.0

+0.4

+0.8

-0.2

I’m keeping an eye on these two

Google’s Growth

So far, 2017 is trending ~10-15% higher than

2016, not including voice or Apple devices

Total Searchers vs. Active Searchers

United States

Canada

United Kingdom

Average

Searches/Month

% of Searchers w/ 10+

Searches/Month

103-119

120-139

120-135

~39%

~40%

~41%

Google CTR Breakdown

Relatively flat excluding seasonality = SEO not

being cannibalized by Google’s own results

What are the Web’s Top

Traffic Referrers?

Google.com

Oct 2016 May 2017

Facebook.com

Reddit.com

YouTube.com

Imgur.com

Bing.com

Wikipedia.org

Gained/Lost

59.2%

6.5%

5.4%

4.5%

2.2%

2.2%

1.4%

Yahoo.com 6.0%

62.6%

5.9%

4.1%

4.7%

1.5%

2.1%

1.4%

5.0%

+3.4%

-0.6%

-1.3%

+0.2%

-0.6%

-0.1%

+0%

-1.0%

Amazon.com 1.3% 1.4% +0.1%

Google.com

Oct 2016 May 2017

Facebook.com

Reddit.com

YouTube.com

Imgur.com

Bing.com

Wikipedia.org

Gained/Lost

59.2%

6.5%

5.4%

4.5%

2.2%

2.2%

1.4%

Yahoo.com 6.0%

62.6%

5.9%

4.1%

4.7%

1.5%

2.1%

1.4%

5.0%

+3.4%

-0.6%

-1.3%

+0.2%

-0.6%

-0.1%

+0%

-1.0%

Amazon.com 1.3% 1.4% +0.1%

This is when Reddit stopped using

Imgur for all its image hosting

Google.com

Oct 2016 May 2017

Facebook.com

Reddit.com

YouTube.com

Imgur.com

Bing.com

Wikipedia.org

Gained/Lost

59.2%

6.5%

5.4%

4.5%

2.2%

2.2%

1.4%

Yahoo.com 6.0%

62.6%

5.9%

4.1%

4.7%

1.5%

2.1%

1.4%

5.0%

+3.4%

-0.6%

-1.3%

+0.2%

-0.6%

-0.1%

+0%

-1.0%

Amazon.com 1.3% 1.4% +0.1%

In 7 months, Google gained

more share than all but the

top 5 even have

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K 10K+

Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2%

Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3%

Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4%

Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2%

Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2%

Not All Referrers Send Traffic Equally(data below from May 2017)

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K 10K+

Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2%

Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3%

Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4%

Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2%

Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2%

Not All Referrers Send Traffic Equally(data below from May 2017)

Google distributes traffic pretty evenly

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K 10K+

Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2%

Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3%

Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4%

Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2%

Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2%

Not All Referrers Send Traffic Equally(data below from May 2017)

Facebook is strongly biased to the top

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K 10K+

Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2%

Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3%

Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4%

Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2%

Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2%

Not All Referrers Send Traffic Equally(data below from May 2017)

Reddit & YouTube even more so

Google Search Activity

The average searcher does ~3.4 queries per

day on their desktop and mobile (each).

Mobile CTR

2.0% on Paid

40.9% on Organic

57.1% Don’t Click

2.8% on Paid

Desktop CTR

62.2% on Organic

35% Don’t Click

CTR on Google Mobile vs. Desktop

There may be more traffic opportunity from

desktop STILL due to higher CTRSource

Rankings Are Determined

By a Few, Broad Areas of

Input#2

The 8 Broad Areas of Google’s Ranking Algorithm

(for classic, ten-blue-links style results):

Links

Quality of Host

Domain

Query

Satisfaction

User

ExperiencePersonalization

Technical &

Crawl

KeywordsContent

Does the text match what Google’s ML systems

calculate to be relevant, high-quality, & a match for

the searcher’s intent?

Content

Editorially-given, anchor-text-rich, followed links

from high quality sources still matter to Google

(esp. in competitive results)

Links

If Google sees high rates of pogo-sticking or other

signals that your page/site isn’t solving search

queries, they’ll likely rank you lower

Query

Satisfaction

Via WB Friday

Using the searcher’s keywords intelligently on

your page still matters for rankings (and for CTR in

the results)

Keywords

Domains accrue signals of quality & value.

Powerful domains may give the pages they host a

boost in ranking ability.

Quality of Host

Domain

Via OSE

Google wants to see sites provide an easy-to-use,

intuitive experience on every device, at every

speed, without impediment.

User

Experience

Speed & accessibility to crawlers still matters, and

Google still doesn’t handle non-text, or non-HTML-

link accessible pages well.

Technical &

Crawl

The geography, device, search history, and timing

of a searcher’s query can all change Google’s

results significantly.

Personalization

Ranking in Classic

Results May No Longer

Be Enough to Win#3

18 Unique Types of SERPs that

Show Up in 0.5%+ of Google’s

Results

One of my favorites: the “disaster type” answer

In our data, only ~3% of

results are the “classic ten

blue links” kind

SERPs like

these are far

more

common

These types of

results can

dramatically reduce

organic CTR (in

this case, Moz

estimates only

~24% organic

CTR)

Infuriatingly, Google’s

restricted who can appear in

certain types of listings (e.g.

video is now YouTube or

Vimeo only)

And on mobile, even more

kinds of searches are limited

to particular networks

(Google Play & iPhone App

Store).

Analyze Which Types of SERPs Appear Most in the

Keywords You Care About

These show me how many of

each SERP type appears in

the results for this keyword

list (via KWE)

Then Determine What Verticals & SERP Types You

Need to Optimize For

It might pay to

generate some

visual charts in

addition to a text-

only version…

We expected answers

like these would

siphon away traffic

from our site… In

reality, we got more!

Featured Snippets are one of the most powerful

forms of this:

But some answers really do

remove traffic (estimates of

50%+ traffic loss to web

results after SERP changes

like these)

Consider Click-Through-Rate When

Choosing Keywords

The organic results on this

page probably get only

~60% of the clicks from

searchers

Consider Click-Through-Rate When

Choosing Keywords

But, the organic results here

are likely getting 100% of

the clicks

You can make these estimates yourself when evaluating

keywords for SEO effort:

Or you can use a tool like Keyword Explorer to get the

CTR Opportunity scores

100% CTR

Opportunity

60% CTR

Opportunity

It’s Possible to Use SEO to Get Into Featured Snippets

(and earn big CTR boosts)

They beat out Wikipedia by

phrasing the content to match

the *answer* Google wanted for

this search query

More on How to Become the Answer:

Via Dr. Pete (and more Dr. Pete)

SEO Doesn’t Work For

Every Organization#4

Some products don’t have enough explicit search volume:

Some find the SEO results too competitive to be worthwhile:

Some have chosen not to build the strength required in content

creation/marketing (for a variety of reasons):

Should Your Company Invest in Making

SEO a Core Competency?

Opportunity (search volume)

Opportunity Cost (other channels)

Passion & Interest

Cost of Acquisition vs. Lifetime Value

My Best Advice for

Building SEO Into Your

Company’s Marketing#5

Contract First, Then Hire

Via Moz’s

Recommended List

Expect 6+ Months of Investment

w/ Little to No ROI

Your first few months will

probably look like this.

Focus on Your Marketing Flywheel,

Not on Finding an Elusive Growth Hack

Moz’s

Flywheel

KW Research +

Industry Intuition

Publish

Content

Promote via

Social Channels

Push to email +

RSS subscribers

Earn Links +

AmplificationGrow social, email,

RSS, & WoM channels

Grow Domain

Authority

Earn Search &

Referral Traffic

Rank for More

Competitive KWs

KW Research +

Industry Intuition

Publish

Content

Promote via

Social Channels

Push to email +

RSS subscribers

Earn Links +

AmplificationGrow social, email,

RSS, & WoM channels

Grow Domain

Authority

Earn Search &

Referral Traffic

Rank for More

Competitive KWs

In 2006, I was lucky if

new content led to any

links or rankings at all

KW Research +

Industry Intuition

Publish

Content

Promote via

Social Channels

Push to email +

RSS subscribers

Earn Links +

AmplificationGrow social, email,

RSS, & WoM channels

Grow Domain

Authority

Earn Search &

Referral Traffic

Rank for More

Competitive KWs

But, by 2017, nearly every

post earns a handful of

links, & some earn a lot!

Moz is a Business Built on Content

Dollar Shave Club

was Built on a Press

& Media Flywheel

Via NYTimes

Dribbble was Built on a UGC/Community

Flywheel

But… Almost Every Flywheel Finds

a Point (or Points) of Friction

Publish

Content

Promote via

Social Channels

Push to email +

RSS subscribers

Crap… We’re not reaching anyone

who will link/amplify us

This is a Good Time for a

GROWTH HACK!

Hacks aren’t necessarily evil, spammy,

or without value.

They can be useful when applied to a

sound marketing strategy.

Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | rand@moz.com

Bit.ly/execseo2017