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What SEOs Need to Know About Topic Modeling & Semantic Connectivity – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Search engines, especially Google, have gotten remarkably good at understanding searchers’ intent—what we mean to search for, even if that’s not exactly what we search for. How in the world do they do this? It’s incredibly complex, but in today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers the basics—what we all need to know about how entities are connected in search.

For reference, here’s a still of this week’s whiteboard!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re talking topic modeling and semantic connectivity. Those words might sound big and confusing, but, in fact, they are important to understanding the operations of search engines, and they have some direct influence on things that we might do as SEOs, hence our need to understand them.

Now, I’m going to make a caveat here. I am not an expert in this topic. I have not taken the required math classes, stats classes, programming classes to truly understand this topic in a way that I would feel extremely comfortable explaining. However, even at the surface level of understanding, I feel like I can give some compelling information that hopefully you all and myself included can go research some more about. We’re certainly investigating a lot of topic modeling opportunities and possibilities here at Moz. We’ve done so in the past, and we’re revisiting that again for some future tools, so the topic is fresh on my mind.

So here’s the basic concept. The idea is that search engines are smarter than just knowing that a word, a phrase that someone searches for, like “Super Mario Brothers,” is only supposed to bring back results that have exactly the words “Super Mario Brothers,” that perfect phrase in the title and in the headline and in the document itself. That’s still an SEO best practice because you’re trying to serve visitors who have that search query. But search engines are actually a lot smarter than this.

One of my favorite examples is how intelligent Google has gotten around movie topics. So try, for example, searching for “That movie where the guy is called The Dude,” and you will see that Google properly returns “The Big Lebowski” in the first ranking position. How do they know that? Well, they’ve essentially connected up “movie,” “The Dude,” and said, “Aha, those things are most closely related to ‘The Big Lebowski. That’s what the intent of the searcher is. That’s the document that we’re going to return, not a document that happens to have ‘That movie about the guy named ‘The Dude’ in the title, exactly those words.'”

Here’s another example. So this is Super Mario Brothers, and Super Mario Brothers might be connected to a lot of other terms and phrases. So a search engine might understand that Super Mario Brothers is a little bit more semantically connected to Mario than it is to Luigi, then to Nintendo and then Bowser, the jumping dragon guy, turtle with spikes on his back — I’m not sure exactly what he is — and Princess Peach.

As you go down here, the search engine might actually have a topic modeling algorithm, something like latent semantic indexing, which was an early model, or a later model like latent Dirichlet allocation, which is a somewhat later model, or even predictive latent Dirichlet allocation, which is an even later model. Model’s not particularly important, especially for our purposes.

What is important is to know that there’s probably some scoring going on. A search engine — Google, Bing — can understand that some of these words are more connected to Super Mario Brothers than others, and it can do the reverse. They can say Super Mario Brothers is somewhat connected to video games and very not connected to cat food. So if we find a page that happens to have the title element of Super Mario Brothers, but most of the on-page content seems to be about cat food, well, maybe we shouldn’t rank that even if it has lots of incoming links with anchor text saying “Super Mario Brothers” or a very high page rank or domain authority or those kinds of things.

So search engines, Google, in particular, has gotten very, very smart about this connectivity stuff and this topic modeling post-Hummingbird. Hummingbird, of course, being the algorithm update from last fall that changed a lot of how they can interpret words and phrases.

So knowing that Google and Bing can calculate this relative connectivity, connectivity between the words and phrases and topics, we want to know how are they doing this. That answer is actually extremely broad. So that could come from co-occurrence in web documents. Sorry for turning my back on the camera. I know I’m supposed to move like this, but I just had to do a little twirl for you.

Distance between the keywords. I mean distance on the actual page itself. Does Google find “Super Mario Brothers” near the word “Mario” on a lot of the documents where the two occur, or are they relatively far away? Maybe Super Mario Brothers does appear with cat food a lot, but they’re quite far away. They might look at citations and links between documents in terms of, boy, there’s a lot pages on the web, when they talk about Super Mario Brothers, they also link to pages about Mario, Luigi, Nintendo, etc.

They can look at the anchor text connections of those links. They could look at co-occurrence of those words biased by a given corpi, a set of corpuses, or from certain domains. So they might say, “Hey, we only want to pay attention to what’s on the fresh web right now or in the blogosphere or on news sites or on trusted domains, these kinds of things as opposed to looking at all of the documents on the web.” They might choose to do this in multiple different sets of corpi.

They can look at queries from searchers, which is a really powerful thing that we unfortunately don’t have access to. So they might see searcher behavior saying that a lot of people who search for Mario, Luigi, Nintendo are also searching for Super Mario Brothers.

They might look at searcher clicks, visits, history, all of that browser data that they’ve got from Chrome and from Android and, of course, from Google itself, and they might say those are corpi that they use to connect up words and phrases.

Probably there’s a whole list of other places that they’re getting this from. So they can build a very robust data set to connect words and phrases. For us, as SEOs, this means a few things.

If you’re targeting a keyword for rankings, say “Super Mario Brothers,” those semantically connected and related terms and phrases can help with a number of things. So if you could know that these were the right words and phrases that search engines connected to Super Mario Brothers, you can do all sorts of stuff. Things like inclusion on the page itself, helping to tell the search engine my page is more relevant for Super Mario Brothers because I include words like Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, Nintendo, etc. as opposed to things like cat food, dog food, T-shirts, glasses, what have you.

You can think about it in the links that you earn, the documents that are linking to you and whether they contain those words and phrases and are on those topics, the anchor text that points to you potentially. You can certainly be thinking about this from a naming convention and branding standpoint. So if you’re going to call a product something or call a page something or your unique version of it, you might think about including more of these words or biasing to have those words in the description of the product itself, the formal product description.

For an About page, you might think about the formal bio for a person or a company, including those kinds of words, so that as you’re getting cited around the web or on your book cover jacket or in the presentation that you give at a conference, those words are included. They don’t necessarily have to be links. This is a potentially powerful thing to say a lot of people who mention Super Mario Brothers tend to point to this page Nintendo8.com, which I think actually you can play the original “Super Mario Brothers” live on the web. It’s kind of fun. Sorry to waste your afternoon with that.

Of course, these can also be additional keywords that you might consider targeting. This can be part of your keyword research in addition to your on-page and link building optimization.

What’s unfortunate is right now there are not a lot of tools out there to help you with this process. There is a tool from Virante. Russ Jones, I think did some funding internally to put this together, and it’s quite cool. It’s  nTopic.org. Hopefully, this Whiteboard Friday won’t bring that tool to its knees by sending tons of traffic over there. But if it does, maybe give it a few days and come back. It gives you a broad score with a little more data if you register and log in. It’s got a plugin for Chrome and for WordPress. It’s fairly simplistic right now, but it might help you say, “Is this page on the topic of the term or phrase that I’m targeting?”

There are many, many downloadable tools and libraries. In fact, Code.google.com has an LDA topic modeling tool specifically, and that might have been something that Google used back in the day. We don’t know.

If you do a search for topic modeling tools, you can find these. Unfortunately, almost all of them are going to require some web development background at the very least. Many of them rely on a Python library or an API. Almost all of them also require a training corpus in order to model things on. So you can think about, “Well, maybe I can download Wikipedia’s content and use that as a training model or use the top 10 search results from Google as some sort of training model.”

This is tough stuff. This is one of the reasons why at Moz I’m particularly passionate about trying to make this something that we can help with in our on-page optimization and keyword difficulty tools, because I think this can be very powerful stuff.

What is true is that you can spot check this yourself right now. It is very possible to go look at things like related searches, look at the keyword terms and phrases that also appear on the pages that are ranking in the top 10 and extract these things out and use your own mental intelligence to say, “Are these terms and phrases relevant? Should they be included? Are these things that people would be looking for? Are they topically relevant?” Consider including them and using them for all of these things. Hopefully, over time, we’ll get more sophisticated in the SEO world with tools that can help with this.

All right, everyone, hope you’ve enjoyed this addition of Whiteboard Friday. Look forward to some great comments, and we’ll see you again next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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How to Include Influencers in Your Content Strategy

Posted by Amanda_Gallucci

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.

The first thing most people think when they hear “influencers” is promotion. Important people with an engaged following can amplify the reach of whatever idea, content or brand they choose to share. If you only weave influencers into your content strategy when your finished product is ready to be promoted, however, you’re missing out on the full potential of having respected experts on your team.

Knowing when and how they can best be engaged at different stages is critical to moving these leaders from outside influencers to brand partners.

Measure an influencer’s true value

In order to find the right influencers to give your content strategy a boost, you first should understand what makes a person an influencer and how influence will play a role within the larger content landscape.

Whether you’re looking to build brand awareness or drive traffic, what matters is not sheer numbers of followers, but the amount of engaged followers.

Twitalyzer’s analytics provide a good start to assessing who is influential on Twitter. The tool measures not only the potential impact users have based on their number of followers, but also the likelihood that other Twitter users will retweet or mention a particular user. 

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Beyond finding an influencer who’s engaged enough to spread your message, also consider how this person became influential in the first place. Whether he or she has years of experience, brilliant ideas, cohesive arguments or all of the above, consider how you can harness these strengths to maximize your potential for creating a successful relationship. Asking influencers to tweet out a link might give you a bump in traffic, but asking for their opinions, advice and time in different ways will be infinitely more valuable.

Lead with strategy

How influencers fit into your campaign should be determined according to audience research and campaign goals. Know what platforms your target audience interacts with, what interests are strong enough to drive them to take action and who they trust. The more naturally these insights are woven into your content, the easier it will be to find influencers in this segment who will appreciate what you have to share.

Campaign goals are equally crucial because depending on what you want to achieve, you might change the angle of your messaging or favor different platforms. Not every influencer has the same level of activity and reach on every social channel, so identify influencers who are stars on the right platforms. Similarly, tailor your message for each influencer so that anything they share on your behalf looks organic alongside their other content.

Once you have a solid foundation for your strategy, start looking for influencers and begin your outreach process. With enough lead time to send along a beta version or rough draft, you can tweak content based on their feedback. You’ll also need allow time for them to collaborate with you on original content, create any sponsored or guest content or write a review or give a quote that you can use on your content’s release.

Don’t ask for too much of an influencer’s time, however, especially if you are asking for offhand feedback and not entering into a paid engagement. Build a relationship before you ask for favors, and even still, make the ask as easy as possible by providing the right amount of background and simplifying what you want the person to do. Rand’s Whiteboard Friday on earning the amplification of influencer walks through the importance of the relationship-building aspect and enticing influencers with what’s in it for them.

Find influencers

With a clear understanding of the role influencers play within your overall strategy, you’re ready to identify the right candidates.

Countless tools are available to help you find influencers in different verticals, so choose based on the action you want the influencer to take. If you are searching for a thought leader who can write engaging content, a tool like ClearVoice will help you find credible authors who focus on a particular topic. For each writer, you can view a list of articles he or she has written on that subject.

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When you need social influencers who can help you amplify content, Buzzsumo is a great tool. Through their Influencer search, you can find people who frequently share content on a given topic and can click through to see what these links are.

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Another approach to finding social influencers is to search Twitter bios using Followerwonk and sorting by Social Authority. 

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Engage influencers at different stages

Outreach

Outreach ideally starts with organically following influencers and engaging with them over time. Then reaching out to them via email or social media is less about introductions and more about the specific project you want to pitch to the influencer.

There will also be times when you find an influencer who aligns with your strategy but you don’t have the relationship-building lead time. For this cold outreach, write a succinct introduction that includes goals your goals for the content and the benefits the influencer will receive by working with you. Then make your ask. Personalization and quality are key. If you find outreach challenging, this guide from Portent is a great place to start.

Make outreach easier for yourself by using a tool like BuzzStream that automates and tracks the process. It will help you find contacts at certain publishers—giving you the twofold opportunity to pitch your own content as well as get in touch with influential authors. It also generates templated, customizable outreach emails.

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Just remember, even if you already have a solid relationship with an influencer, show that you value his or her time. Do as much of the groundwork as you can in advance. For instance, if you want people to share something on social, draft one to three example social posts specifically crafted for each influencer and platform.

Start of relationship

Once an influencer agrees to work with you, provide just the right amount of background information and instruction. This will vary by project and influencer.

For an influencer creating content, define the basics (e.g., article, ebook, video, etc.), in addition to length and editorial theme. Find a good balance between leaving room for the influencer to share his or her expertise, while setting up key points and takeaways you want the content to achieve. You should also create and send an abbreviated style guide. There’s no need to disclose every internal note you have, but if you can provide the basic stylistic do’s and don’ts, product or company background, audience information, and voice and tone guidelines, you will spend less time on edits and back-and-forths with the influencer. Set clear expectations and schedule benchmark dates where you can check in on progress and make revisions where necessary.

In the case of engaging influencers to amplify content, you won’t need to give quite as much guidance on how to craft the social message, but you can still offer suggestions on angles that would work well or any topics or phrases your brand wouldn’t want to be associated with. It’s also important to provide summaries of any piece of content you are asking influencers to share so that a) if they don’t have time to read every word, they still feel comfortable with the concept and b) there won’t have to be any guesswork in deciding what part of the content is most important to share.

Relationship maintenance

If your experience with an influencer is mutually beneficial and you know you’ll want to partner again, make sure to check in periodically. Don’t ask for something new every time you reach out. Keep in touch by sending along interesting content or company updates the influencer might find useful. Better yet, always extend a congratulations on a promotion or a new position.

To ensure you remember to engage with the right people, use tools like Commun.it, which identify the influential people you interact with on Twitter, and prompt you to re-engage with people you haven’t @ mentioned recently. 

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LinkedIn Contacts is also a handy way to keep track of conversations and check on any updates on the influencer’s end to look out for opportunities to get in touch.

As you continue to grow existing influencer relationships, adjust your overarching strategy to incorporate more key industry leaders. Create new roles for influencers to play in shaping your content and its promotion.

Always be strategizing

The best way to include influencers in your content strategy is to involve them at every stage of the process, including:

  1. Creation: Plan out what types of influencers will be helpful and the role they should play based on the target audience and campaign goals.
  2. Implementation: Share a strategic brief with onboarded influencers and leave flexibility for changes based on the influencer’s feedback.
  3. Measurement: Factor in the reach of influencers as part of the success of your campaign.

Over time, integrating and managing influencer relationships will become second nature, and they will seem more like team members and partners.


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Introducing Followerwonk Profile Pages

Posted by petebray

Followerwonk has always been primarily about social graph analysis and exploration: from tracking follower growth, comparing relationships, and so on.

Followerwonk now adds content analysis and user profiling, too

In the Analyze tab, you’ll find a new option to examine any Twitter user’s tweets. (Note that this is a Pro-only feature, so you’ll need to be a subscriber to use it.)

You can also access these profile pages by simply clicking on a Twitter username anywhere else in Followerwonk.

For us, this feature is really exciting, because we let you analyze not just yourself, but other people too. In fact, Pro users can analyze as many other Twitter accounts as they want!

Now, you’ll doubtlessly learn lots by analyzing your own tweets. But you already probably have a pretty good sense of what content works well for you (and who you engage with frequently).

We feel that Profile Pages really move the needle by letting you surface the relationships and content strategies of competitors, customers, and prospects.

Let’s take a closer look.

Find the people any Twitter user engages with most frequently

Yep, just plug in a Twitter name and we’ll analyze their most recent 2000 tweets. We’ll extract out all of the mentions and determine which folks they talk to the most.

Here, we see that  @dr_pete talks most frequently with (or about) Moz, Rand, Elisa, and Melissa. In fact, close to 10% of his tweets are talking to these four! (Note the percentage above each listed name.)

This analysis is helpful as it lets you quickly get a sense for the relationships that are important for this person. That provides possible inroads to that person in terms of engagement strategies.

Chart when and what conversations happen with an analyzed user’s most important relationships

We don’t just stop there. By clicking on the little “see engagement” link below each listed user, you can see the history of the relationship.

Here, we can see when the engagements happened in the little chart. And we actually show you the underlying tweets, too.

This is a great way to quickly understand the context of that relationship: is it a friendly back and forth, a heated exchange, or the last gasp of a bad customer experience? Perhaps the tweets from a competitor to one his top customers occurred weeks back? Maybe there’s a chance for you to make inroads to that customer?

There’s all sorts of productive tea-reading that can happen with this feature. And, by the way, don’t forget that you already have the ability to track all the relationships a competitor forms (or breaks), too.

Rank any Twitter user’s tweets by importance to surface their best content

This is my favorite feature—by far—in Followerwonk.

Sure, there are other tools that tell you your most popular tweets, but there are few that let you turn that feature around and examine other Twitter users. This is important because (let’s face it) few of us have the volume of RTs and favorites to make self-analysis that useful. But when we examine top Twitter accounts, we come away with hints about what content strategies they’re using that work well.

Here we see that Obama’s top tweets include a tribute, an irreverent bit of humor, and an image that creatively criticizes a recent Supreme Court ruling. What lessons might you draw from the content that works best for Obama? What content works best for other people? Their image tweets? Tweets with humor? Shorter tweets? Tweets with links? Go do some analyzing!

Uncover top source domains of any Twitter users

Yep, we dissect all the URLs for any analyzed user to assemble a list of their top domains.

This feature offers a great way to quickly snapshot the types of content and sources that users draw material from. Moreover, we can click on “see mentions” to see a timeline of when those mentions occurred for each domain, as well as what particular tweets accounted for them.

In sum…

These features offer exciting ways to quickly profile users. Such analysis should be at the heart of any engagement strategy: understand who your target most frequently engages with, what content makes them successful, and what domains they pull from.

At the same time, this approach reveals content strategies—what, precisely, works well for you, but also for other thought leaders in your category. Not only can you draw inspiration from this approach, but you can find content that might deserve a retweet (or reformulation in your own words).

I don’t want to go too Freudian on you, but consider this: What’s the value of self-analysis? I mean that to say that unless you have a lot of data, any analytics product isn’t going to be totally useful. That’s why this addition in Followerwonk is so powerful. Now you can analyze others, including thought leaders in your particular industry, to find the secrets of their social success.

Start analyzing!

Finally, this is a bittersweet blog post for me. It’s my last one as a Mozzer. I’m off to try my hand at another bootstrapping startup: this time, software that lets you build feature tours and elicit visitor insights. I’m leaving Followerwonk in great hands, and I look forward to seeing awesome new features down the line. Of course, you can always stay in touch with me on Twitter. Keep on wonkin’!


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