Posted by randfish

NOTE: This post is mostly theoretical, but I hope potentially helpful and worthy of discussion.

Over the last few years, and particularly since the advent of Hummingbird, I’ve noticed Google becoming more nuanced about the content it ranks, even for queries where they don’t have lots of data on what users click, what they engage with, what they ignore, and their behavioral habits around a search (related searches, usage patterns before/after the query, etc.).

My theory is that this new intelligence presents a dramatic opportunity for marketers and content creators who can identify the patterns and spot queries where critical questions may lie unanswered.

Historically, much of what we’d see from Google’s rankings could be explained through a few big factors:

• Links
• Domain Authority
• Keyword Matching
• Relevance
• Freshness (and, certainly during Google’s partnership with Twitter, social signals)

We know Google’s become more complex, but even from 2010-2012, I’d say the vast majority of searches’ rank ordering could be explained with elements contained in these broad categories.

Today, I’m observing a lot of rankings that seem to connect with brand signals, user/usage data, and a far more nuanced consideration of links, authority, and relevance, but perhaps most uniquely, and especially in queries that have information-gathering intent, there seems to be a set of ranking signals related to what I’ll call “relevance to alternative searcher intents.”

I’ll try to illustrate this with an example. Here’s a query for ” space pen” in Google US (non-personalized with geo-biasing removed):

There’s three potential popular “intents” that searchers have around this query.

1. Those seeking Fisher’s branded Space Pen
2. Those seeking to learn about the oft-repeated myth around the supposedly costly development of the Space Pen by NASA when Russian cosmonauts used pencils
3. Those seeking the Spacepen framework for Coffeescript

And Google’s done a nice job recognizing those unique intents and populating the SERPs appropriately with results to answer all three. Historically I’d have called this “QDD” or “Query Deserves Diversity” (something I  first wrote about way back in 2008). 

But actually, I think we’ve seen an evolution from the raw “diversity” inputs (which, in my opinion, mostly revolved around combinations of click behavior in the SERPs and search modification behavior, i.e. people searching for “space pen” then refining to search for “space pen coffeescript”) to a model that has more sophistication.

That more sophisticated model might be better illustrated with this query for ” most flavorful steak” (also Google US, non-personalized, non-geo-biased):

There are multiple intents around this query, but they’re far more subtle than those for “Space Pen.” Searchers are likely seeking things like a description of the various types of cuts, information about what makes a steak taste better, perhaps some interesting types of steaks they haven’t heard of previously or why certain cuts are more expensive than others. 

What’s remarkable is how Google has made shifts in queries like this in the last couple years. If I performed this query in 2012 (which I’m fairly sure I did, but sadly didn’t screenshot), I would have seen a lot more keyword-matching and a much more singular focus on articles that specifically mentioned “flavorful” (or fairly direct synonyms thereof) in the title and headline. Actually, it would look a lot more like  Bing’s results (no offense to them; these results are actually quite good, too, just far more keyword match-focused):

Today, from Google, I’m getting a broader interpretation of the true intent(s) behind the use of the adjective, “flavorful.”

There’s results that touch on expensive cuts of steak, of types of beef itself (like Wagyu & Kobe), on what makes a steak more flavorful, and there’s a site showing up (Niman Ranch) that seems totally out of place when you look at the link numbers, but makes a lot of sense as a highly co-cited brand name. For reference, here’s a  basic keyword difficulty report for the phrase:

My opinion (and this is pure, unvarnished, speculation) is that Google’s using inputs like:

• Relationships between words, phrases, concepts, and entities to get closer to an understanding of language and an evaluation of the content quality itself
• Patterns detected in how authoritative pieces write about/mention the keywords
• User and usage data signals that look at multiple sessions, multiple queries, and identify patterns of searcher satisfaction (possibly using machine learning)
• Topic modeling that tries to identify terms and phrases that are associated with diversity of opinion and topical focus so there’s an element of finding not just useful information, but potentially new and interesting information, too

I don’t believe these are overwhelming signals today. Links are still very powerful. Domain authority is still clearly influential. But for a lot of what I’m seeing in the end of the chunky middle and into the long tail of the keyword demand curve, I think there’s an opportunity for marketers to perform some content gap analysis and win rankings without needing the quantities of links & authority otherwise required.

Here’s my strawman concept for starting out with some Content-Gap SEO (and hopefully y’all can rip into and improve upon it in the comments):

Step One: Identify the keywords you’re targeting that fit in the backside of the chunky middle and long tail.

Step Two: Prioritize your list based on the terms/phrases you believe will be most valuable (and remember that doesn’t always mean highest search volume).

Step Three: Starting from the top, write down 4-6 types of intent and/or pieces of unique information that you believe searchers might have/want when performing each query.

Step Four: Perform the query in Google, and look through the top 10. Do you see results that answer all of the intent/info types you wrote down? Write down how many are missing (including 0 if everything’s already fulfilled).

Step Five: Use your number as a potential prioritizer for the creation of new content or the modification/addition of content to existing pages. Then watch and see if Google feels the same way and begins rewarding you for this.

While this process is speculative and my theories are, too, I will say that I have talked to and emailed with a lot of folks in the SEO field of late who’ve talked over and over about the surprise they’ve had from purely content-based rankings and rankings improvements. I might be wrong about a lot of the details, but I’d be willing to bet that there’s something new going on in how Google analyzes and rewards pages that provide the right kind of content.

For marketers who can identify the patterns, find the content gaps, and fulfill them, I believe there’s opportunity to rank without having to pound nearly the same levels of external links at your pages.

Looking forward to the discussion!

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 by randfish

NOTE: This post is mostly theoretical, but I hope potentially helpful and worthy of discussion.

Over the last few years, and particularly since the advent of Hummingbird, I’ve noticed Google becoming more nuanced about the content it ranks, even for queries where they don’t have lots of data on what users click, what they engage with, what they ignore, and their behavioral habits around a search (related searches, usage patterns before/after the query, etc.).

My theory is that this new intelligence presents a dramatic opportunity for marketers and content creators who can identify the patterns and spot queries where critical questions may lie unanswered.

Historically, much of what we’d see from Google’s rankings could be explained through a few big factors:

• Links
• Domain Authority
• Keyword Matching
• Relevance
• Freshness (and, certainly during Google’s partnership with Twitter, social signals)

We know Google’s become more complex, but even from 2010-2012, I’d say the vast majority of searches’ rank ordering could be explained with elements contained in these broad categories.

Today, I’m observing a lot of rankings that seem to connect with brand signals, user/usage data, and a far more nuanced consideration of links, authority, and relevance, but perhaps most uniquely, and especially in queries that have information-gathering intent, there seems to be a set of ranking signals related to what I’ll call “relevance to alternative searcher intents.”

I’ll try to illustrate this with an example. Here’s a query for ” space pen” in Google US (non-personalized with geo-biasing removed):

There’s three potential popular “intents” that searchers have around this query.

1. Those seeking Fisher’s branded Space Pen
2. Those seeking to learn about the oft-repeated myth around the supposedly costly development of the Space Pen by NASA when Russian cosmonauts used pencils
3. Those seeking the Spacepen framework for Coffeescript

And Google’s done a nice job recognizing those unique intents and populating the SERPs appropriately with results to answer all three. Historically I’d have called this “QDD” or “Query Deserves Diversity” (something I  first wrote about way back in 2008). 

But actually, I think we’ve seen an evolution from the raw “diversity” inputs (which, in my opinion, mostly revolved around combinations of click behavior in the SERPs and search modification behavior, i.e. people searching for “space pen” then refining to search for “space pen coffeescript”) to a model that has more sophistication.

That more sophisticated model might be better illustrated with this query for ” most flavorful steak” (also Google US, non-personalized, non-geo-biased):

There are multiple intents around this query, but they’re far more subtle than those for “Space Pen.” Searchers are likely seeking things like a description of the various types of cuts, information about what makes a steak taste better, perhaps some interesting types of steaks they haven’t heard of previously or why certain cuts are more expensive than others. 

What’s remarkable is how Google has made shifts in queries like this in the last couple years. If I performed this query in 2012 (which I’m fairly sure I did, but sadly didn’t screenshot), I would have seen a lot more keyword-matching and a much more singular focus on articles that specifically mentioned “flavorful” (or fairly direct synonyms thereof) in the title and headline. Actually, it would look a lot more like  Bing’s results (no offense to them; these results are actually quite good, too, just far more keyword match-focused):

Today, from Google, I’m getting a broader interpretation of the true intent(s) behind the use of the adjective, “flavorful.”

There’s results that touch on expensive cuts of steak, of types of beef itself (like Wagyu & Kobe), on what makes a steak more flavorful, and there’s a site showing up (Niman Ranch) that seems totally out of place when you look at the link numbers, but makes a lot of sense as a highly co-cited brand name. For reference, here’s a  basic keyword difficulty report for the phrase:

My opinion (and this is pure, unvarnished, speculation) is that Google’s using inputs like:

• Relationships between words, phrases, concepts, and entities to get closer to an understanding of language and an evaluation of the content quality itself
• Patterns detected in how authoritative pieces write about/mention the keywords
• User and usage data signals that look at multiple sessions, multiple queries, and identify patterns of searcher satisfaction (possibly using machine learning)
• Topic modeling that tries to identify terms and phrases that are associated with diversity of opinion and topical focus so there’s an element of finding not just useful information, but potentially new and interesting information, too

I don’t believe these are overwhelming signals today. Links are still very powerful. Domain authority is still clearly influential. But for a lot of what I’m seeing in the end of the chunky middle and into the long tail of the keyword demand curve, I think there’s an opportunity for marketers to perform some content gap analysis and win rankings without needing the quantities of links & authority otherwise required.

Here’s my strawman concept for starting out with some Content-Gap SEO (and hopefully y’all can rip into and improve upon it in the comments):

Step One: Identify the keywords you’re targeting that fit in the backside of the chunky middle and long tail.

Step Two: Prioritize your list based on the terms/phrases you believe will be most valuable (and remember that doesn’t always mean highest search volume).

Step Three: Starting from the top, write down 4-6 types of intent and/or pieces of unique information that you believe searchers might have/want when performing each query.

Step Four: Perform the query in Google, and look through the top 10. Do you see results that answer all of the intent/info types you wrote down? Write down how many are missing (including 0 if everything’s already fulfilled).

Step Five: Use your number as a potential prioritizer for the creation of new content or the modification/addition of content to existing pages. Then watch and see if Google feels the same way and begins rewarding you for this.

While this process is speculative and my theories are, too, I will say that I have talked to and emailed with a lot of folks in the SEO field of late who’ve talked over and over about the surprise they’ve had from purely content-based rankings and rankings improvements. I might be wrong about a lot of the details, but I’d be willing to bet that there’s something new going on in how Google analyzes and rewards pages that provide the right kind of content.

For marketers who can identify the patterns, find the content gaps, and fulfill them, I believe there’s opportunity to rank without having to pound nearly the same levels of external links at your pages.

Looking forward to the discussion!

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 by robinparallax

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

In this article, I’ll examine the art of thinking sideways for one of the slightly more tricky marketing clients I’ve worked with. I hope that this will provide an insight for fellow content marketers and SEOs in similar scenarios.

It’s amazing what you end up finding online working in the SEO game. Some of the most obscure business sectors have thriving communities and many online magazines and publications. It’s really quite staggering.

What any SEO or content marketer should know is that there really is a conversation happening online in every industry. However niche it might at first appear to be, positioning your client to become a part of that conversation is the challenge!

“Boring” businesses

I’ve worked on a pretty mixed bag of clients over the past two years or so. From pharmaceutical services to interior design products, and from renewable energies to our digital agency’s own efforts.

But one client has really stood out in terms of being a ‘boring’ business. However, this has actually become the most fun and exciting campaign I’ve worked on.

The business? Car parks.

The starting point

As a more content production focused SEO I must admit that I panicked a little. How on earth could we create content around what is essentially a concrete space with a few white lines painted on it. Car parking is a generic, mundane service that no one really cares about. Or do they?

Of course, the obvious link building technique would be reaching out to local businesses and organisations in the surrounding areas, asking them to link to their nearest car park for their own customers’ information. However, that had its limitations in its own right – it was finite.

We needed to consider how we could create awesome content around their brand and sector.

Brainstorming for “boring”

I always find myself coming up with loads of ideas for clients, some good, some bad. A good content marketer will admit that some of their ideas are rubbish, while some will have more clout. One thing I must recommend to SEOs and content marketers is that no idea is useless.

Some of our agency’s best ideas were sparked from the ‘not so exciting ideas’ that have then been developed and refined into more engaging pieces of content. They’ve had an awesome effect – but I’ll come onto that in a moment.

No matter how extreme or bizarre your client’s business sector is, there will be ways of creating content around it. The best place to start is by throwing down all of your ideas and initial concepts and sharing this with your team. One person’s ‘average idea’ might spark an idea in a colleague’s head and develop into an awesome campaign.

Here’s my equivalent of Rand’s Whiteboard Friday image:

From refining some of these ideas, we began to think about content curation and the opportunities that might manifest from them.

The art of thinking sideways

To create outstanding content you need to go beyond your own expectations. If it doesn’t ‘wow’ your clients, it’s never going to ‘wow’ your target market and get those highly authoritative, juicy links.

In our first few meetings with clients, I always explain that their content is something that already exists. It is the refining, SEO repurposing and creating of it in a suitable way for web audiences that should be the role of the digital agency.

It is really interesting to read recently on Moz that more SEOs are spending a proportion of their time working on site with their client rather than from their agency office. This is something we’re trialing with our clients at the moment.

This gives SEOs:

• A greater understanding of the client’s business
• An insight into the brand and content possibilities
• Ongoing exposure to content opportunities

As an SEO, by repositioning your understanding of the client’s business you can think from a new perspective. You’ll begin to see opportunity where you wouldn’t previously have imagined.

Content is something within the business, something within the brand. It can come from customers, staff, right through to the business’ CEO. Without sounding too evangelical, it’s something within the personality and aura of the business. The role of the SEO agency should be to help tease this out. Hallelujah!

The results

Finding an insight of interest can come from those in the business – after all those who work in it will always know more about the business, its operations and how the sector works. We worked with our car parking client to figure out what drives (pardon the pun) engagement and interest that we could piggyback off and play up to.

We had a few interesting ideas emerge from our discussions after our first few meetings and jumped on the bandwagon of drink driving – which is regularly in the news.

We launched with a drink drive awareness piece of content during the Christmas holidays and also created partnerships with local authorities and national charities to push a road safety campaign

Clicking through the images will show you the creative outcomes we arrived at for a ‘boring’ client.

Drink Driving Awareness

Road Safety

We worked over the past eighteen months on a few different pieces and have a few more in the pipeline. By thinking around the client’s content opportunities, we also created the following pieces:

Battle of the sexes

Interactive road signs quiz

Parking danger spots revealed!

We’ve seen some awesome movement for the client’s keywords over the past eighteen months and are continuing to create content that will provide value and engagement to users. We’ve also been able to organically get a few thousand people liking a car park company Facebook page too!

All of the business’ success has come from thinking sideways around how content can be created, and gaining insights around the industry. We have involved the client’s team from car parking attendants right through to MD as part of the process.

Takeaways

The art of thinking sideways can really provide SEOs and content marketers an opportunity to create outstanding content that will heavily influence a client’s business objectives.

These key points can help break through any content blocks or idea barriers you might come across, but most importantly will help you to create outstanding content.

Marketable assets: Everything to do with the client’s business is a marketable asset that can be repurposed or manipulated for search marketing.

Get out of the office: Working a day every month at the client’s office will give you a new perspective on their service or product. This can lead to new ideas around the type of content you will need to be creating.

Conversations: Talk to people within the organisation across different levels, they will all offer up different types of insights and perspectives. These might be insights that you can turn into amazing ideas for content.

Value: Is the content you’re creating providing value of some sort to those using it? This could be emotive, or practical.

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 by robinparallax

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

In this article, I’ll examine the art of thinking sideways for one of the slightly more tricky marketing clients I’ve worked with. I hope that this will provide an insight for fellow content marketers and SEOs in similar scenarios.

It’s amazing what you end up finding online working in the SEO game. Some of the most obscure business sectors have thriving communities and many online magazines and publications. It’s really quite staggering.

What any SEO or content marketer should know is that there really is a conversation happening online in every industry. However niche it might at first appear to be, positioning your client to become a part of that conversation is the challenge!

“Boring” businesses

I’ve worked on a pretty mixed bag of clients over the past two years or so. From pharmaceutical services to interior design products, and from renewable energies to our digital agency’s own efforts.

But one client has really stood out in terms of being a ‘boring’ business. However, this has actually become the most fun and exciting campaign I’ve worked on.

The business? Car parks.

The starting point

As a more content production focused SEO I must admit that I panicked a little. How on earth could we create content around what is essentially a concrete space with a few white lines painted on it. Car parking is a generic, mundane service that no one really cares about. Or do they?

Of course, the obvious link building technique would be reaching out to local businesses and organisations in the surrounding areas, asking them to link to their nearest car park for their own customers’ information. However, that had its limitations in its own right – it was finite.

We needed to consider how we could create awesome content around their brand and sector.

Brainstorming for “boring”

I always find myself coming up with loads of ideas for clients, some good, some bad. A good content marketer will admit that some of their ideas are rubbish, while some will have more clout. One thing I must recommend to SEOs and content marketers is that no idea is useless.

Some of our agency’s best ideas were sparked from the ‘not so exciting ideas’ that have then been developed and refined into more engaging pieces of content. They’ve had an awesome effect – but I’ll come onto that in a moment.

No matter how extreme or bizarre your client’s business sector is, there will be ways of creating content around it. The best place to start is by throwing down all of your ideas and initial concepts and sharing this with your team. One person’s ‘average idea’ might spark an idea in a colleague’s head and develop into an awesome campaign.

Here’s my equivalent of Rand’s Whiteboard Friday image:

From refining some of these ideas, we began to think about content curation and the opportunities that might manifest from them.

The art of thinking sideways

To create outstanding content you need to go beyond your own expectations. If it doesn’t ‘wow’ your clients, it’s never going to ‘wow’ your target market and get those highly authoritative, juicy links.

In our first few meetings with clients, I always explain that their content is something that already exists. It is the refining, SEO repurposing and creating of it in a suitable way for web audiences that should be the role of the digital agency.

It is really interesting to read recently on Moz that more SEOs are spending a proportion of their time working on site with their client rather than from their agency office. This is something we’re trialing with our clients at the moment.

This gives SEOs:

• A greater understanding of the client’s business
• An insight into the brand and content possibilities
• Ongoing exposure to content opportunities

As an SEO, by repositioning your understanding of the client’s business you can think from a new perspective. You’ll begin to see opportunity where you wouldn’t previously have imagined.

Content is something within the business, something within the brand. It can come from customers, staff, right through to the business’ CEO. Without sounding too evangelical, it’s something within the personality and aura of the business. The role of the SEO agency should be to help tease this out. Hallelujah!

The results

Finding an insight of interest can come from those in the business – after all those who work in it will always know more about the business, its operations and how the sector works. We worked with our car parking client to figure out what drives (pardon the pun) engagement and interest that we could piggyback off and play up to.

We had a few interesting ideas emerge from our discussions after our first few meetings and jumped on the bandwagon of drink driving – which is regularly in the news.

We launched with a drink drive awareness piece of content during the Christmas holidays and also created partnerships with local authorities and national charities to push a road safety campaign

Clicking through the images will show you the creative outcomes we arrived at for a ‘boring’ client.

Drink Driving Awareness

Road Safety

We worked over the past eighteen months on a few different pieces and have a few more in the pipeline. By thinking around the client’s content opportunities, we also created the following pieces:

Battle of the sexes

Interactive road signs quiz

Parking danger spots revealed!

We’ve seen some awesome movement for the client’s keywords over the past eighteen months and are continuing to create content that will provide value and engagement to users. We’ve also been able to organically get a few thousand people liking a car park company Facebook page too!

All of the business’ success has come from thinking sideways around how content can be created, and gaining insights around the industry. We have involved the client’s team from car parking attendants right through to MD as part of the process.

Takeaways

The art of thinking sideways can really provide SEOs and content marketers an opportunity to create outstanding content that will heavily influence a client’s business objectives.

These key points can help break through any content blocks or idea barriers you might come across, but most importantly will help you to create outstanding content.

Marketable assets: Everything to do with the client’s business is a marketable asset that can be repurposed or manipulated for search marketing.

Get out of the office: Working a day every month at the client’s office will give you a new perspective on their service or product. This can lead to new ideas around the type of content you will need to be creating.

Conversations: Talk to people within the organisation across different levels, they will all offer up different types of insights and perspectives. These might be insights that you can turn into amazing ideas for content.

Value: Is the content you’re creating providing value of some sort to those using it? This could be emotive, or practical.

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!