STAYING A STEP AHEAD IN SEARCH

Transcription

1 STAYING A STEP AHEAD IN SEARCH Michael King (@ipullrank) GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT

2 They asked me to speak to you today about staying a step ahead in search

3 but I m definitely not this guy (AOL s Digital GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT

4 and I m also not this guy (Ray GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT

5 I m just this guy (@ipullrank). GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT

6 I m just this guy (@ipullrank). GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT

7 Here s the secret. GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT

8 Staying a step ahead in I m just this guy (@ipullrank). Search is not about chasing the algorithm. It s about understanding technology and human behavior. GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT

9 Why did Google improve its crawling capabilities? A few years back I explained that Search Engine spiders are headless browsers rather than text-based crawlers Google s ability to index, understand and interact with pages as late shows that we don t need to fear JavaScript anymore.

10 The Adoption Rate of JavaScript MV* technologies This makes complete sense because a large amount of the web is moving toward JavaScript rendering technologies.

11 AngularJS leads the pack All of these technologies are seeing upticks in adoption, but Angular is well in the lead.

12 Why did Google move towards mobile-first design? Google s move to a mobile first design has shortened the title tag from 70 characters to ~55.

13 Mobile = Growth Google recognizes mobile as their key growth center.

14 International Growth Google is a company that brings wi-fi to countries via hot air balloons for user growth. There are countries where people s only access to the web is via mobile devices.

15 Ad Spend shift to Mobile Marketers are showing a shift from Desktop ad spending to mobile as well.

16 basically CINDY KRUM IS SMARTER THAN ALL OF US! GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT

17 The Death of Authorship Google removed Authorship from the SERPs recently. Why?

18 Incredibly Low Adoption Rate Based on a web grep by Blekko in 2013 it makes sense relauthor isn t something Google is going after anymore. Only 5.6% of the web implemented it.

19 Hummingbird Google Hummingbird is an overhaul of the fundamental Google algorithm that has yielded more features in the SERP. Google is answering more questions.

20 Schema.org was an obvious play towards this What did you think Google was going to do with all of that markup we re putting on pages?

21 Panda & Penguin If this is still a problem for you. You re doing it wrong.

22 SEO will continue to be discounted as long as we re reactive rather than proactive.

23 My Predictions

24 This nerd wants to build the Star Trek computer. GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT

25 Google Brain Google is working on deep learning projects to help computers understand the world the same way that a human does.

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28 The Link Graph Is Not Enough It was true when PageRank was invented, but in 2015 the link graph does not reflect natural human behavior anymore.

29 Social Signals Already Correlate SearchMetrics and numerous other studies already show correlations with social signals and rankings.

30 What About Other Signals? I suspect Google will use more social signals, sniffing, Google Analytics data and Chrome usage to supplement the link graph and better reflect human behavior.

31 Twitter Firehose Anyone? Google isn t just going to do what they did before with the firehose. They were discovering news and new content just fine.

32 Co-occurrence and Co-relevance Matters It s been proven a number of times that co-relevant and cooccurring terms matter.

33 Google is Modeling People Google has already started modeling people based on the data across the entire Google ecosystem. Remember when they consolidated their privacy policy in 2011?

34 Affinity Segments They ve already started offering the ability to target in Adwords against these segments or models of people. This is the beginning of hyper-personalization.

35 Google Analytics lets you Measure Affinity Segments Do you think Google themselves is not leveraging this data?

36 Google Now Is Just the Beginning Google will continue to refine the Now product until it s becomes the predictive search concierge.

37 Mobile Is Going to be a New Frontier The possibilities that arise due to app indexation and deep linking make mobile search an entirely new playground

38 Mobile is a Precursor to the Internet of Things From wearables to machines, how Google solves for mobile will dictate how they can leverage the Internet of Things for context on both the advertising and Organic side.

39 Facebook will Change Everything Once Facebook gets into Search, there will be no more dancing around context. Everything will be about microaudiences.

40 So What Should You Do?

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42 Embrace Personas or Specific Audience Segments Google is allowing ads based on hyper targeted segments. Their next step is to take personalization to the next level and serve Organic results based on that.

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44 Understand that people search to fulfill a need and keep that laser focused.

45 [flowers] [when do roses bloom] [what flowers for a first date] [buying chrysanthemums] [flower a month club]

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47 Embrace JavaScript and Prerender Technologies JavaScript is the language of the modern web. Frameworks like Angular, Backbone, Ember, React aren t going anywhere and you will need to understand the concepts of Prerender.

48 Embrace Microdata Formats Entities, strings not things. Builtvisible has a great guide on microdata formats that is continually updated

49 Bring Entities to your Keyword Research Leveraging AlchemyAPI s natural language processing APIs you can extract entities at scale. Use this GrepWords to speed up entity based keyword research.

50 Enhanced Site Search is the Quick Win JSON-LD for Enhanced Site Search is the high impact quick win that you can show a client in order to get them to buy-in for Schema.org implementation.

51 Embrace Co-occurrence Searchmetrics Content Optimization feature is a great way to understand what co-occurring keywords you should be using.

52 Embrace All Things Mobile Markup for apps and other mobile specific items will continue to roll out. Stay on top of these.

53 Stop Building Links that Don t Make Sense No one cares about your damn product page. Make things people should care about before your start building links to them.

54 Stay Up to Date on Web Technologies The technologies being widely adopted by the web are the ones that will dictate where the algorithm must go. Stay in the know.

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57 THANK YOU QUESTIONS? ipullrank GAJAH ANNUAL REPORT