seo

Posted by Jess_Champion

In a past life I worked exclusively in traditional print and broadcast PR, where digital coverage was viewed as a bonus. But since landing a job as a PR consultant at Distilled, all of that has changed. My goals have shifted.

Previously my goals were things like brand awareness and changing audience perceptions—and these were driven by press coverage.

But, while these goals still come in to play, I have a new goal too—to build links. And, as most of you know, link building is not easy.

So, eight months down the line, I feel it’s time to share what I’ve learned.

An eight-step plan

There are a few tried and tested methods for PR driven link-building, like guest posting and pitching for by-lined articles, but these can be slow-burning processes.

What I’m going to talk you through is a process which, if invested in and executed well, is much more likely to result in multiple links from high quality, authoritative news sites.

There’s no quick fix. Even before search was on my radar, I’d always believed in integrated communications. Link-building is just another component of what should be a multi-faceted approach, and as such, I believe that links are symptomatic of a well-executed PR campaign.

For any marketing campaign you should be looking to use multiple channels. However, the purpose of this post is to specifically explore ways of working with the media, and consequently how to build links on top-tier media sites.

Step one: Find the story

If you want to be in the media, you need to find a story. It’s as simple as that. No amount of spin is going to see your latest annual review on The New York Times‘ homepage.

In a recent Distilled blog post, I wrote about the eight criteria that make something newsworthy. In brief, these criteria are:

Image: @Distilled

Head over to that post if you’d like more details and examples of each one.

Sometimes you’ll have things going on that already fit the bill. Maybe you’re launching a new product in time for Christmas. Or perhaps you’ve got a great case study which will help you tell a human interest story.

Relating to real people, like Batkid, will help you tell your story

(Picture: Bhautik Joshi/Flickr)

Oftentimes, though, our clients just haven’t got anything newsworthy going on. And this is when you need to create your own story.

Step two: Create a story

There are a few different ways you can create a story, the most obvious being PR stunts. But these often mean spending big bucks. A cheaper way to create a credible news story is to conduct a survey.

For example, I recently ran a survey for our client Worldpay Zinc. We only launched it two weeks ago, but here are some of the results so far:

• An article on the website of one of the UK’s national newspapers, The Telegraph, incorporating two links
• A write-up on The Guardian, which also included two links
• Daily Mail coverage
• 3 pieces of national print coverage
• 30+ pieces of online regional coverage
• A BBC Radio 2 appearance
• A mention on national TV

You’ll notice that I’ve included results that don’t include links, but that’s to reiterate a point that I often make at Distilled: Links are symptomatic of great PR.

That’s not to say there aren’t ways and means to increase your chances of getting links, though, and we’ll explore these in the steps below.

Step three: Conduct a survey

Once you’ve decided on a survey topic and incorporated as many of the newsworthy criteria as you can, you’ll need to devise the questions. Here are some general rules for conducting robust PR surveys:

1. Start with the story and work backwards

It makes a good deal of sense to have an idea of your angle before you start, so always think about the story you’d like to tell. Each question should directly relate to this story, regardless of whether you get the results you expect or not. The aim here is not to manipulate, but to make sure the answers translate into interesting data points.

2. Choose a reputable market research agency

Journalists are much more likely to cover surveys if they come from a trustworthy company. The agency will also help you fine-tune your questions and make sure you’re not being unintentionally leading.

3. Think about your demographic

Surveying the general public is fine but sometimes looking at a specific niche will strengthen your story. If your client is a parenting website, why not run a survey of parents? As an aside, if you poll the general public then you’ll need to survey at least 2,000 people. 1,000 is generally fine for smaller niches.

4. Split your demographic

A great way of drilling down into a story is by splitting your demographic into subcategories. Most polling companies will do this by age, gender, and region as standard but, often at additional cost, it’s possible to dig even deeper. A strong leading stat with lots of subsequent data points will help you create a much more robust story.

5. Ask as many questions as you can

As a rule, you should ask at least 10 questions. Along with the demographic splits, this should give you enough data to write a compelling news story with lots of interesting points. The more details you can add to a story, the more news copy you’ll generate.

6. Use lists

Where you can, compile lists. Journalists love a good “Top 10 list.” In fact, the WPZ survey I mentioned earlier has two articles on the Telegraph site. The second was titled “The 10 jobs men don’t trust women (or men) to do.”

Step four: Make your story link-worthy

Once you’ve analysed your data and come up with a strong story, you then have to find a way to generate links. Increasingly, newspapers are reluctant to link out, and in my experience, the only way to get a decent link on a high-tier site is to create something of value to both the journalist and their readers. Digital journalists are crying out for great visuals and digital content; if you can create something that genuinely adds value to the story (and makes the journalist look good in front of their editor), then you’re onto a winner.

For the WPZ story we created a report and an infographic, both of which garnered links.

Click image to open(via WorldPayZinc).

Step five: Present the story

The press release is something that is hotly debated in the PR industry, with arguments both for and against.

However, as David Hamilton says in the article linked to above, while the context may have changed, the need for press releases has not: “The key is to make sure that they are part of a proper strategy and are a supplement to, not a substitute for, proper relationships with journalists.”

I use press releases to get my ducks in a line, to get to the crux of a story and to help me establish my key messages. I don’t publish them on newswires. For me, the press release comes at the end of a conversation with a journalist. For the most part, it’s a tidy way of sending them everything they need, after they’ve already expressed interest in a story. It’s worth noting that I do still get asked for press releases. When written well, with your target publication in mind, they can really help out a busy journalist. You should also publish your press releases on your website, so journalists can find them online if they need to.

Step six: Writing the press release

Rather than trying to big-up your client with hyperbolic language that will surely piss off journalists, spend your energy trying to think like a reporter and find the most interesting elements of your story. You can do this by thinking about the “w’s:”

Who? Who’s involved in the story? Who cares?

What? What’s the story? What’s new?

Where? Where is the story taking place? Is there a local angle and/or local publications you can target?

When? Is the story relevant now? Can you tie it in with a current or forthcoming event or “hot topic?”

Why? Why should people care? Why are you telling this story? Why is it relevant to the media you’re targeting?

Structuring your release

Think of a press release as an inverted pyramid—get as many of the w’s as possible in the first paragraph. While doing this, get straight to the point and keep it simple. Remember to avoid jargon and hyperbole.

The reason for visualising an inverted pyramid is that, historically, editors would slash a press release from the bottom up if they didn’t have space for the whole thing. So get crucial elements of your story in early. Your following paragraphs should flesh out the story and give more detail.

(Image: Wikipedia)

Be human: Quotes that’ll get you quoted

The majority of the release should be factual and straight to the point. There is, however, room for some colour in the form of a quote or two. Quotes are where a little hyperbole is permitted. For survey stories, quotes should be used to say how you feel about the results. Are you shocked? Saddened? Thrilled? For further credibility you could also include a quote from an expert, or from a case study.

You should always include quotes in a press release but never quote someone who won’t be available for interview. This is a guaranteed way to irritate a journalist calling for a follow-up with your spokesperson.

Most importantly, make sure your quote sounds like a real person. This is the ideal opportunity to get your passion for the story across. Don’t spew mission statements or company visions, and don’t sound like a robot—or worse still, an advert. Read it out loud, does it sound like something someone would actually say?

As an aside, if you can, try to ensure that your spokesperson has a profile page on their website. Journalists will occasionally link to this profile page if they feel the homepage is too commercial. Similarly, another trick that has worked for me in the past is to include the website’s URL in a spokesperson’s job title.

Freddie Starr Ate my Hamster: getting your headline right

Keep your headline as short and interesting as possible, but don’t try too hard. Occasionally there’s scope for a great pun or witticism, but if not, don’t sweat it. It’s more important that it actually makes sense and piques interest in the reader.

Try to keep your headline on one line, and if possible, short enough to be tweeted with a link. And, tempting as it is, avoid putting the company name in the headline. Remember, you’re offering the journalist an interesting story, not an advert.

And you’re off!

By now you should have a good idea of what makes a decent press release but here are a few extra pointers to help you on your way:

• Make sure you include your contact information (including a phone number), and make sure you’re actually available to respond swiftly to any resulting enquiries.
• Double space your release so it’s easy to read.
  
• Try to keep the main body of the release on one side of A4 (roughly 8.5×11″). If you must write more, make sure you don’t go over two pages.
  
• Copy the press release into the main body of an email—never include attachments.
  
• Similarly, if you have accompanying images, just let the journalist know rather than clogging up their inbox—they’ll tell you if they want to see them.
• If you’d like to see an example, the Worldpay Zinc press release can be read here.

Step seven: Find journalists

The most important aspect of pitching a story is making sure you find the right journalist. And this is nothing that a good old-fashioned Google search can’t help you with. Look at stories on similar subjects, or those written for similar audiences—and don’t undervalue smaller niche sites.

Once you’ve found the journalists you want to target, finding their contact details needn’t be too difficult. I’m fortunate in that I have the luxury of a subscription to a media database. If you can’t afford this luxury, here are a few tips that could help:

• Take a look at this post from our COO Rob Ousbey—it contains tonnes of great tricks for finding email addresses.
• Call the switchboard of the organisation you’re targeting. It’s fine to call and either say, “I have a story on X and would like to know who best to pitch it to,” or to simply ask for an email address.
• For UK-based journalists, take a look at journalisted.com
• For US-based journalists, take a look at helpareporter.com
• Contact journalists on Twitter. I’ve had success just by saying, “I have something I’d like to pitch to you, mind if I send an email?” Usually they’ll reply with their email address, or at least tell you where to find it.

Step eight: Pitch to journalists

Now that you’ve got the best possible story and have created valuable, link-worthy assets, it’s time to pitch. Pitching is something that I get asked lots of questions about and I’ve met many people that seem terrified of pitching to top-tier journalists. But let me tell you a couple of secrets:

Secret #1: Journalists are human too

Secret #2: If you’ve got a great story lined up, pitching isn’t hard.

Here are my top pitching dos:

• Craft your subject line well. Don’t waste space telling journalists who your client is, tell them about the genuinely newsworthy story you’ve so lovingly crafted.
• Be human and personable.
  
• Get their name right. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard a journalist moan about being wrongly addressed.
• Reference their work. Tell the journalist about an article you particularly enjoyed. But use flattery sparingly—be genuine.
• Build a relationship first. Journalists are more likely to read your emails if they recognise your name. Twitter’s perfect for this.
• Leave a reason to follow up. “Just checking” emails don’t go down well. Ask them if you can help with any more information or an embed code, for example.
• Pre-pitch. If you have a genuine news story, then you’ll need to do all your pitches in one go. (Use Boomerang to schedule emails.) A tactic I’ve had a lot of success with is to pitch the story ahead of the release. Give the journalist enough information to pique their interest. Use an embargo if you need to. (But use sparingly and only for genuine news stories.)
• Keep it short and simple (KISS). Journalists don’t have time to read long, rambling emails.

And don’ts:

• Take advantage. If you have success once, don’t be tempted to go back to the journalist unless you’re certain your story will interest them.
• Blanket bomb journalists with a press release. Press releases are still useful (and journalists still ask me for them) but they should come at the end of a conversation. It is ok to just send releases to general news@ addresses, but don’t expect these emails to be fruitful.
• Call to follow up. Many a PR has been known to call a journalist to say, “Did you receive my press release?” Don’t do it—it will only piss them off! Call ahead if you like, but never after.
• Use hyperbole or buzzwords. It’s just plain annoying.
• Ramble. If you call them, don’t launch into a pitch and ramble on. Ask if they have a moment to spare first.

A quick recap: remember

• The most successful digital PR campaigns incorporate a newsworthy element.
• However, they must contain complementary digital assets in order to get links.
  
• Surveys are a great way of creating stories, but be sure to use a credible research company.
• The press release isn’t dead. But we’ll kill it if we abuse it.
• Pitching isn’t that hard—as long as you are pitching something worthy.
• Links are symptomatic of good PR.

I’m hoping that by now you’ll have a better idea of the process of creating a story and selling it in to the digital press. Just remember that PR isn’t an exact science and there are never any guarantees. When it does pay off, though, the results really do speak for themselves.

Success for Worldpay Zinc: Coverage (and 2 links) on the Telegraph

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Posted by adamsinger

Releasing a mobile app to the public is certainly an accomplishment, but launch day is nowhere near the end of the process. It’s just as vital to measure people’s interaction with your apps as it is to measure their interaction with your web properties.

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Adam Singer—Google’s analytics advocate—walks us through some of the most important metrics to watch to make sure your app is as successful as possible.

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

Video Transcription

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Posted by Dr-Pete

In late 2012 and early 2013, companies were allowed, for the first time, to apply for new TLDs (Top-Level Domains). There was a lot of press about big companies buying swaths of TLDs – for example, Google bought .google, .docs, .youtube, and many more. The rest of us heard the price tag – a cool $185,000 – and simply wrote this off as an interesting anecdote. What you may not realize is that there’s a phase two, and it’s relevant to everyone who owns a website (below: 544 new TLDs – cloud created with Tagxedo).

Phase 2: TLDs go live

You may have assumed that these TLDs would simply be bought up and tucked away for private use by mega-corporations, Saudi Princes, and Justin Bieber. The reality is that many of these TLDs are going to go live soon, and domains within them are going to be sold to the public, just like traditional TLDs (.com, .net, etc.). I talked to Steve Banfield, SVP Registrar Services at Demand Media (which owns eNom and Name.com), to get the scoop on what this process will mean for site owners.

Gold rush 2014

ICANN had more than 1,900 applications for TLDs, and of those Name.com currently lists 544 that will be available for sale in the near future. These domains cover a wide range of topics – here are just a few, to give you a flavor of what’s up for grabs:

• .app
• .attorney
• .blog
• .boston
• .flowers
• .marketing
• .porn
• .realtor
• .store
• .web
• .wedding
• .wtf

This is an unprecedented explosion in available domain names, and you can expect a gold rush mentality as companies scoop up domains to protect trademarks and chase new opportunities and as individuals register a wide variety of vanity domains. So, when do these domains go on sale, and how much will they cost? As Steve explained to me, this gets a bit tricky…

“Sunrise” & Pre-registration

Understandably, ICANN is reluctant to simply release hundreds of TLDs into the wild all at once and upset the ecosystem. As the TLDs have been granted, they’ve been gradually delegated to the global DNS and are coming online in batches. As each TLD becomes available, it has to undergo a 60-day “sunrise” period. This period allows trademark holder to register claims and potentially lock down protected words. For example, Dell may want to lock down dell.computer or Amazon.com may grab amazon.book. These domains must still be registered (and paid for), but trademark holders get first dibs across any new TLD. Trademark disputes are a separate, legal issue (and beyond the scope of this post).

Some registrars will allow pre-registration during or immediately following the sunrise period. While you can’t technically register a domain without a trademark claim during the 60 day sunrise, they’ll essentially add you to a waiting list. This gets complicated, as multiple registrars could all have people on their waiting list for the same domain, so there are no guarantees. Some registrars are also charging premium prices for pre-registration, and those premiums could carry into your renewals, so read the fine print carefully.

Facts and figures

Once sunrise and pre-registration end, general availability begins. You may be wondering – when is that, exactly? The short answer is: it’s complicated. I’ll attempt to answer the big questions, with Steve’s help:

When do the new domains go on sale?

The first group of domains began their sunrise period on November 26, 2013, and it ends on January 24, 2014. After that, additional domains will come into play in small groups, throughout the year. To find out about any particular domain/TLD, your best bet is to use a service like Name.com’s TLD watch-list, which sends status notifications about specific domains you’re interested in. Your own registrar of choice may have a similar service. The specifics of any given TLD will vary.

How much will the new domains cost?

Unfortunately, it depends. Each TLD can be priced differently, and even within a TLD, some domains may go for a premium rate. A few TLDs will probably be auction-based and not fixed-price. Use a watch-list tool or investigate your domains of choice individually.

What kind of a land grab can we expect?

With over 500 TLDs in play over the course of months, it’s nearly impossible to say. Some domains, like .attorney, will clearly be competitive in local markets, and you can expect a gold rush mentality. Other domains, like .guru may be popular for vanity URLs. Regional and niche domains, like .okinawa or .rodeo are going to have a smaller audience. Then there are wildcards, like .ninja, that are really anyone’s guess.

SEO implications

Naturally, as a Moz reader, you may be wondering what weight the new TLDs will have with search engines. Will a domain like seattle.attorney have the same ranking benefit as a more traditional domain like seattleattorney.com? Google’s Matt Cutts has stated that the new TLDs won’t have an advantage over existing domains, but was unclear on whether keywords in the new domain extensions will act as a ranking signal. I strongly suspect they will play this by ear, until they know how each of the new TLDs is being used. In my opinion, exact-match domains are no longer as powerful without other signals to back them up, and it’s likely Google may lower the volume on some of the new TLDs or treat them more like sub-domains in terms of ranking power. In other words, they’ll probably have some value, but don’t expect miracles.

There may be indirect SEO benefits. For example, if you own seattle.attorney, it’s more likely people will link to you with the phrase “Seattle attorney”, and since that’s now your brand/domain, it’s more likely to look natural (because it’s more likely to be natural). A well-matched name may also be more memorable, in some cases, although it may take people some time to get used to the new TLDs. To quote Steve directly:

What will matter is the memory of the end user and branding. Which is better: hilton.com or hilton.hotel, chevrolet.com or chevrolet.cars, coors.com or coors.beer? Today, it’s easy to say the .com is “better” for brand recall, but over time we’ll have to see which works better for brand marketing.

My conservative opinion is this – don’t scoop up dozens of domains just in the hopes of magically ranking. Register domains that match your business objectives or that you want to protect – either because of your own trademarks or for future use. If you hit the domain game late and have a .com that you hate (this-is-all-they-had-left.com), it might be a good time to consider your options for something more memorable.

Todd Malicoat wrote an excellent post last year on choosing an exact-match domain, and I think many of his tips are relevant to the new TLDs and any domain purchase. Ultimately, some people will use the new TLDs creatively and powerfully, and others will use them poorly. There’s opportunity here, but it’s going to take planning, brand awareness, and ultimately, smart marketing.

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Posted by kaiserthesage

Content ties everything in the digital marketing realm together—that’s why it is king.

Content creation has been the core part of my blog/business’ inbound marketing strategy this year, which was around 70% of my entire marketing effort. The other 30% was allocated to content promotion/distribution, relationship building, site optimization, and analytics.

So this post is basically a case study of how I simplified a very complex process by only focusing on one integral part of inbound marketing (content), and how that led to hundreds of service leads for our company this year.

On content strategy

Content assets help brands communicate their messages to their target audiences. These may come in the form of visual guides, web-based tools, extensive resources and many more (as also listed by Cyrus Shepard on his recent Moz post).

In my case, I aim for every blog post I publish to be an asset that I can continuously optimize and improve.

So in order for my overall campaign to be really scalable (and for me to be able to easily integrate other inbound marketing practices), I based my content development efforts on these core principles:

• Create content that contains ideas/information that isn’t found anywhere else.
• Make the content very comprehensive and evergreen if possible.

And as for the content formats, I mostly focused on creating:

• Case studies
• Extensive and evergreen blog posts (how-to’s)
• Reusable content (newsletters, slide presentations, PDFs, etc.)

If in case you’re wondering about the content assets I’ve repurposed, here are few samples:

2 months ago, I released a 4 part newsletter series that talks about 12 different scalable link building tactics.

After a couple of weeks, I decided to publish the entire series as a long-form blog post here on Moz.

Another sample is with one of my most popular guides this year (that was also featured on Moz’s top-10 monthly newsletter) entitled 22 link building tips from @xightph, which I just recently turned into a SlideShare presentation:

Perhaps this approach of allocating the majority of my efforts into content development is easier for me to accomplish because I established my blog’s readership 2 years before I tried it, and also given that I’ve already built relationships with other online marketers who habitually share my new blog posts.

I still believe that this exact process is replicable for those who haven’t yet established themselves. Since it always comes down to what you can provide to your industry and finding ways to let others know you have it.

Content = links

Content assets are able to attract and build links over time, knowing that it is in the nature of content to be genuinely linkable.

Link building becomes automatic when you focus on creating useful and actionable content on a regular basis (and, of course, letting other people who’re interested in your content’s topic know that your content exists).

Your content won’t stand on its own and be linkable by itself, so it’s also important to make an effort for it to be more visible to your target audience. Here are a few things you can do to ensure it’ll get to your audience:

• Outreach: Connect with other content publishers, industry influencers, and enthusiasts, and see if they’re interested in checking out your content.
• Social ads: Use content placement services from Facebook or StumbleUpon to get more eyeballs to your content.
• Conversations: Participate and share your content on relevant discussions from online communities in your space (forums, groups, blogs, Q&A sites, etc.).
• Distribution: Promote your content assets through other content distribution channels such as guest blogging, regular columns, newsletters, slide presentations, videos, or podcasts.

Further reading:

• How to promote and build links to your great content
• 32 experts share their best content promotion tips

Content = relationships

Providing high-value content assets on a regular basis will also help you easily connect and engage other content publishers in your industry.

This can somehow impact how other people perceive your brand as a publisher, especially when other thought leaders are sharing your content, interacting with your brand, and inviting you to contribute to their websites (which is quite similar to what Moz has done in past years).

Relationships, partnerships, and alliances are vital in this age of marketing, as they can help increase your readership and follower base, and can particularly help improve the shareability of your site’s content.

Here are a few pointers on how to engage and build relationships with industry influencers:

• Mention or use their works as a reference for your content. You can also ask them to review and validate the information within your content to build a rapport (which is also a great way to get them to see the quality of your work).
• Make sure that your content appeals to their audience/followers; this increases the likelihood of getting your content shared.
• Don’t worry. You don’t have any reason to be afraid to reach out to influencers when you’re really confident with the caliber of your content.

Content = social activity

With the right push, a well-thought-out piece of content will almost always do well in terms of social sharing. Most content assets are designed to be share-worthy, and the common factors that make most content assets shareable are:

• Their design and if they’re visually appealing.
• If they’ve been shared by popular/influential entities in their industries.
• If the content is emotionally compelling, educational, useful, and/or just simply adds unique value to the industry.

Making your linkable assets timeless or evergreen can also amplify its social activity, given that every time it gets a new visitor the content remains relevant, which can continuously increase the amount of social shares it is getting.

And the more you create content assets on your website, the more you can grow your following base and network. Which is why content plays a big role in social media – because it’s what people are sharing.

For more actionable tips on increasing your content assets’ social activity, you might want to also check the post I wrote a few weeks ago at Hit Reach on how to get more social shares for your site.

Content = search rankings

The ways in which search engines determine web pages’ importance (and whether they really deserve to be prominently visible in search results) have evolved over the years.

Major factors such as relevance (which can be measured through usage/page activity) and authority (measured through social, links, domain authority, brand signals, etc.), though, still play a huge role in terms of search rankings. These metrics are also elements that most successful content assets embody.

Great content generates rankings.

A couple of pointers on making the most out of your site’s content pool to boost your SEO:

• Turn the pages on your website that target key industry terms into evergreen content assets.
• Optimize your important pages/content assets for interaction, conversions, and user-experience. For example, test your pages’ CTAs, encourag people to share the content, etc. These are the key areas that will make your pages rank better in search results.

Further reading:

• How to optimize content for search

Content = email subscribers

Email marketing is an essential part of inbound marketing, because it’s a marketing platform that many businesses have full control of (owned media).

Growing your email list is a whole lot easier when you’re consistently putting new content up on your site (and especially when you consider every piece of content you launch as an asset).

The more content you publish, the more people get to discover your brand, which can ultimately increase your chances of getting them to subscribe or sign up for your email newsletter.

Tips on how to increase email sign-ups:

• Make your opt-in form(s) very visible on the site’s key landing pages.
• Incentivize sign-ups by offering free content such as ebooks, whitepapers, newsletter series, and/or access to free web-based tools.

Content = conversions

Content assets can definitely lift conversions, mainly because they can strongly demonstrate the brand’s domain expertise and authority.

If you’ve planted a lot of useful and actionable content on your site, then these things are influencing your site’s ability to convert visitors.

More on improving your content assets’ conversions:

• Identify which landing pages/assets are constantly driving sales/new customers/service inquiries to your business. Make them more visible by building more internal/incoming links to them, improving or updating the content itself to earn better search rankings, sharing them on social networks, or basically anything that can improve their traffic.
• Continually test and improve the content’s calls to action.

Becoming a better inbound marketer

Before I became an SEO in 2010, I was a freelance writer. It never occurred to me that I’d be doing both in the future—and actually more.

But I guess knowing how to get the right traffic and having a better grasp of the kinds of content that my audience needs and wants to read made me a better inbound marketer.

I would love to hear your ideas about this approach to inbound marketing, or if you have questions, I’d also love to see them in the comments section. You can also follow me on Twitter @jasonacidre.

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Posted by BenMorel86

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.

We all know that over the past year, there have been some big updates to Google’s algorithms, and we have felt what it has been like to be in the middle of those updates. I wanted to take a big step back and analyse the cumulative effects of Google’s updates. To do that, I asked four questions and analysed a year of MozCast data to find the answers.

Looking back over the last year – or more precisely the last 15 months through 1st September 2013 – I aimed to answer four questions I felt are really important to SEOs and inbound marketers. These questions were:

• Are there really more turbulent days in the SERPs than we should expect, or are all SEOs British at heart and enjoy complaining about the weather?
• If it’s warmer today than yesterday, will it cool down tomorrow or get even warmer?
• It sometimes feels like big domains are taking over the SERPs; is this true, or just me being paranoid?
• What effects have Google’s spam-fighting had on exact and partial domain matches in SERPs?

Before We Start

First, thanks to Dr. Pete for sending me the dataset, and for checking this post over before submission to make sure all the maths made sense.

Second, as has been discussed many times before on Moz, there is a big caveat whenever we talk about statistics: correlation does not imply causation. It is important not to reverse engineer a cause from an effect and get things muddled up. In addition, Dr. Pete had a big caveat about this particular dataset:

“One major warning – I don’t always correct metrics data past 90 days, so sometimes there are issues with that data on the past. Notably, there was a problem with how we counted YouTube results in November/December, so some metrics like “Big 10” and diversity were out of whack during those months. In the case of temperatures, we actively correct bad data, but we didn’t catch this problem early enough…

All that’s to say that I can’t actually verify that any given piece of past data is completely accurate, outside of the temperatures (and a couple of those days have been adjusted). So, proceed with caution.”

So, with that warning, let’s have a look at the data and see if we can start to answer those questions.

Analysis: MozCast gives us a metric for turbulence straight away: temperature. That makes this one of the easier questions to answer. All we need to do is to take the temperature’s mean, standard deviation, skew (to see whether the graph is symmetric or not), and kurtosis (to see how “fat” the tails of the curve are). Do that, and we get the following:

What does all this mean? Well:

• A normal day should feel pretty mild (to the Brits out there, 68°F is 20°C). The standard deviation tells us that 90% of all days should be between 46°F and 90°F (8°C and 32°C), which is a nicely temperate range.
• However, the positive skew means that there are more days on the warm side than the cool side of 68°F.
• On top of this, the positive kurtosis means we actually experience more days above 90°F than we would expect.

You can see all of this in the graph below, with its big, fat tail to the right of the mean.

Graph showing the frequency of recorded temperatures (columns) and how a normal distribution of temperatures would look (line).

As you can see from the graph, there have definitely been more warm days than we would expect, and more days of extreme heat. In fact, while the normal distribution tells us we should see temperatures over 100°F (38°C) about once a year we have actually seen 14 of them. That’s two full weeks of the year! Most of those were in June of this year (the 10th, 14th, 18th, 19th, 26th, 28th, 29th to be precise, coinciding with the multi-week update that Dr. Pete wrote about)

And it looks like we’ve had it especially bad over the last few months. If we take data up to the end of May the average is only 66°F (19°C), so the average temperature over the last three months has actually been a toasty 73°F (23°C).

Answer: The short answer to the question is “pretty turbulent, especially recently”. The high temperatures this summer indicate a lot of turbulence, while the big fat tail on the temperature graph tells us that it has regularly been warmer than we might expect throughout the last 15 months. We have had a number of days of unusually high turbulence, and there are no truly calm days. So, it looks like SEOs haven’t just been griping about the unpredictable SERPs they’ve had to deal with, they’ve been right.

Analysis: The real value of knowing about the weather is in being able to make predictions with that knowledge. So, if today’s MozCast shows is warmer than yesterday it would be useful to know whether it will be warmer again tomorrow or colder.

To find out, I turned to something called the Hurst exponent, H. If you want the full explanation, which involves autocorrelations, rescaled ranges, and partial time series, then head over to Wikipedia. If not, all you need to know is that:

• If H<0.5 then the data is anti-persistent (an up-swing today means that there is likely to be a down-swing tomorrow)
• If H>0.5 the data is persistent (an increase is likely to be followed by another increase)
• If H=0.5 then today’s data has no effect on tomorrow’s

The closer H is to 0 or 1 the longer the influence of a single day exists through the data.

A normal distribution – like the red bell curve in the graph above – has a Hurst exponent of H=0.5. Since we know the distribution of temperatures with its definite lean and fat tails not normal, we can guess that its Hurst exponent probably won’t be 0.5. So, is the data persistent or anti-persistent?

Well, as of 4^th September that answer is persistent: H=0.68. But if you’d asked on 16^th July – just after Google’s Multi-week Update but before The Day The Knowledge Graph Exploded – the answer would have been “H=0.48, so neither”: it seems that one effect of that multi-week update was to reduce the long-term predictability of search result changes. But back in May, before that update, the answer would again have been “H=0.65, so the data is persistent”.

Answer: With the current data, I am pretty confident in saying that if the last few days have got steadily warmer, it’s likely to get warmer again tomorrow. If Google launches another major algorithm change, we might have to revisit that conclusion. The good news is that the apparent persistence of temperature changes should give us a few days warning of that algo change.

Analysis: We’ve all felt at some point like Wikipedia and About.com have taken over the SERPs. That we’re never going to beat Target or Tesco despite the fact that they never seem to produce any interesting content. Again, MozCast supplies us with a couple of ready-made metrics to analyse whether or not this is true or not: Big 10 and Domain Diversity.

First, domain diversity. Plotting each day’s domain diversity for the last 15 months gives you the graph below (I’ve taken a five-day moving average to reduce noise and make trends clearer).

Trends in domain diversity, showing a clear drop in the number of domains in the SERPs used for the MozCast.

As you can see, domain diversity has dropped quite a lot. It dropped 16% from 57% in June 2012 to 48% in August 2013. There were a couple of big dips in domain diversity – 6^th May 2012, 29^th September 2012, and 31^st January 2013 – but really this seems like a definite trend, not the result of a few jumps.

Meanwhile, if we plot the proportion of the SERPs being taken over by the Big 10 we see a big increase over the same period, from 14.3% to 15.4%. That’s an increase of 8%.

Trends in the five-day moving average of the proportion of SERPs used in the MozCast dataset taken up by the daily Big 10 domains.

Answer: The diversity of domains is almost certainly going down, and big domains are taking over at least a portion of the space those smaller domains leave behind. Whether this is a good or bad thing almost certainly depends on personal opinion: somebody who owns one of the domains that have disappeared from the listings would probably say it’s a bad thing, Mr. Cutts would probably say that a lot of the domains that have gone were spammy or full of thin content so it’s a good thing. Either way, it highlights the importance of building a brand.

Analysis: Keyword-matched domains are a rather interesting subject. Looking purely at the trends, the proportion of listings with exact (EMD) and partial (PMD) matched domains is definitely going down. A few updates in particular have had an effect: One huge jolt in December 2012 had a particular and long-lasting effect, knocking 10% of EMDs and 10% of PMDs out of the listings; Matt Cutts himself announced the bump in September 2012; and that multi-week update that cause the temperature highs in June also bumped down the influence of PMDs.

Trends in the five day moving averages of Exact and Partial Matched Domain (EMD and PMD) influence in the SERPs used in the MozCast dataset.

Not surprisingly, there is a strong correlation (0.86) between changes in the proportion of EMDs and PMDs in the SERPs. What is more interesting is that there is also a correlation (0.63) between their 10-day volatilities, the standard deviation of all their values over the last 10 days. This implies that when one metric sees a big swing it is likely that the other will see a big swing in the same direction – mostly down, according to the graph. This supports the statements Google have made about various updates tackling low-quality keyword-matched domains.

Something else rather interesting that is linked to our previous question is the very strong correlation between the portion proportion of PMDs in the SERPs and domain diversity. This is a whopping 0.94, meaning that a move up or down in domain diversity is almost always accompanied by a swing the same way for the proportion of SERP space occupied by PMDs, and vice versa.

All of this would seem to indicate that keyword matching domains is becoming less important in the search engines’ eyes. But hold your conclusions-drawing horses: this year’s Moz ranking factors study tells us that “In our data collected in early June (before the June 25 update), we found EMD correlations to be relatively high at 0.17… just about on par with the value from our 2011 study”. So, how can the correlation stay the same but the number of results go down? Well, I would tend to agree with Matt Peters‘ hypothesis in that post that it could be due to “Google removing lower quality EMDs”. There is also the fact that keyword matches do tend to have some relevance to searches: if I’m looking for pizzas and I see benspizzzas.com in the listings I’m quite likely to think “they sound like they do pizzas – I’ll take a look at them”. So domain matches are still relevant to search queries, as long as they are supported by relevant content.

So, how can the correlation stay the same but the numbers of results drop? Well, the ranking factors report looks at how well sites rank once they have already ranks. If only a few websites with EMDs rank but they rank very highly, the correlation between rankings and domain matching might be the same as if a number of websites rank way down the list. So if lower quality EMDs have been removed from the ranking – as Dr. Matt and Dr. Pete speculate – but the ones remaining rank higher than they used to, the correlation coefficient we measure will be the same today in 2011.

Answer: The number of exact and partial matches is definitely going down, but domain matches are still relevant to search queries – as long as they are supported by relevant content. We know about this relevance because brands constantly put their major services into their names: look at SEOmoz (before it changed), or British Gas, or HSBC (Hong Kong-Shanghai Banking Corporation). Brands do this because it means their customers can instantly see what they do – and the same goes for domains.

So, if you plan on creating useful, interesting content for your industry then go ahead and buy a domain with a keyword or two in. You could even buy the exact match domain, even if that doesn’t match your brand (although this might give people trust issues, which is a whole different story). But if you don’t plan on creating that content, buying a keyword-matched domain looks unlikely to help you, and you could even be in for a more rocky ride in the future than if you stick to your branded domain.

Whew, that was a long post. So what conclusions can we draw from all of this?

Well, in short:

• Although the “average” day is relatively uneventful, there are more hot, stormy days than we would hope for
• Keyword-matched domains, whether exact or partial, have seen a huge decline in influence over the last 15 months – and if you own one, you’ve probably seen some big drops in a short space of time
• The SERPs are less diverse than they were a year ago, and the big brands have extended their influence
• When EMD/PMD influence drops, SERP diversity also drops. Could the two be connected?
• If today is warmer than yesterday, it’s likely that tomorrow will be warmer still

What are your thoughts on the past year? Does this analysis answer any questions you had – or make you want to ask more? Let me know in the comments below (if it does make you ask more questions I’ll try to do some more digging and answer them).

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