Search competitor analysis: backlinks, keywords and pages

Columnist Andrew Dennis walks through his competitor analysis process to show how you can inform your organic search efforts by unearthing competitor strategies. The post Search competitor analysis: backlinks, keywords and pages appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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The Two-Part SEO Ranking Model: Let's Make SEO Simple

Posted by EricEnge

There sure is a lot of interest in SEO ranking factors:

There have been major studies done on this, notably by both Moz and Searchmetrics. These are groundbreaking pieces of research, and if you're serious about SEO, you need to understand what these studies say.

That said, these are too complex for most organizations to deal with. They need a simpler way of looking at things. At Stone Temple Consulting (STC) we deal with many different types of organizations, including some of the world's largest companies, and some of the highest-traffic websites in the world. For most of these companies, understanding that there are 200+ ranking factors does more harm than good.

Why, you ask? So many people I talk to are looking for a silver bullet. They want to hear that they should only change their heading tags on the second Tuesday of every month, except during leap years, when they should do it on the first Tuesday, except in February when they should change it on the third Monday. These distractions end up taking away from the focus on the two things that matter most: building great content (and a great content experience) and promoting it well.

Today's post is going to lay out a basic approach that most companies can use to simplify their thinking about SEO, and keep their focus on the highest priorities.

What Google recently said

Here's what Google Dublin's Andrey Lippatsev said in a Hangout that I participated in on March 23, 2016. Also participating in the Hangout was Ammon Johns, who asked Andrey what the two most important ranking factors are:

Andrey Lippatsev: Yes. Absolutely. I can tell you what they are. It is content and links going into your site.

There we go, that's a start. According to Google, it's links and content that are the two biggest. Hopefully, the idea that content is a big factor is obvious, but below I'll break out more what great content really entails. In addition, you can see some backup for the power of links in the study I recently published on links as a ranking factor.

Should we think of the world as consisting only of these two factors? It's quite simplistic, and possibly too much so, but let's try to simplify this even more. How many organizations would dramatically improve their SEO if they focused on creating great content and promoting it effectively? I can tell you that from my experience these are two things that many organizations simply don't do.

Does that mean that we can take our two factors and put them into a (purely) hypothetical ranking score equation that looks like this?

I actually think that this equation is pretty effective, though it has some limitations and omissions that I'll describe in more detail below. You also need to think about the concept of "great content," that will get a high Content Score, in the correct manner.

What is "great content?"

If we step back and think about what makes up great content, it seems to me that there are three major components that matter:

1. Relevancy
2. Quality
3. The overall content experience

The first part of this is simple. If the content is not relevant to a query, it shouldn't rank for that query, ever. That makes sense, right?

The second part is also pretty simple, and that's the notion of quality. Does it provide information that people are looking for? Is that information relatively unique to your site? Clearly, it makes sense for the quality of the content to matter a lot.

We can combine the notions of quality and relative uniqueness into the notion of material differentiation. Rand covers this brilliantly in his Whiteboard Friday about creating 10X content.

Creating the 220,001st article on how to make French toast is just not going to cut it:

You need to create something new and compelling that also offers a lot of value. That may not be easy, but being the best at something never is.

If you're in a competitive market, it's reasonable to guess that your top competitors are making great, relevant content on topics that matter to their target audience. For the most important queries, it's probable that the top 5 (and maybe more) pieces of content in that space are really, really good (i.e. more comprehensive than other articles on the topic, or brings in new information that others don't have).

The third part encompasses many pieces.

• Is your content well-organized and easy to read?
• Does it effectively communicate its key points? How do people engage with it? If they land on a page on your site that has the answer to their question, can they quickly and easily find that information?

Once again, you'll find that the major competitors that rank in the top of the SERPs all handle this pretty well too.

Let's now take a look at what the role of the content score in ranking might look like:

Note that the Y-axis is "Chances of Ranking," as opposed to "Ranking." Nonetheless, this curve suggests that the Content Score is a big one, and that makes sense. Only the best of the best stuff should rank. It's simple.

Digging a bit deeper on what goes into content quality

But what about title tags? Heading tags, use of synonyms? Page layout and design? Stop and think about it for a moment. Aren't those all either part of creating higher-quality content, or making that content easier to consume?

You bet.

For example, imagine that I wrote this piece of content:

It could be the greatest information in the world, but it's going to be really hard for users to read, and it will probably have terrible user engagement signals. On the other hand, imagine that my content looks like this:

Would you say the quality of one of these pieces of content is higher? I would. The second one is much easier to read, and therefore will deliver more value to users. It will get better engagement, and yes, it will probably get linked to more often.

Why do links get separate treatment?

You could argue that links are just another measurement of content quality, and there is some truth to that, but we give them separate treatment in this discussion for two reasons:

1. They're still the best measurement of authority.

Yes, I know I'm ruffling some feathers now, but this is what my experience after more than 15 years in SEO (and seeing hundreds of SEO campaigns) has taught me. To get and sustain a link, someone has to have a website, has to be willing to modify that website, and they have to be willing to have their site's visitors click on the link to leave their site and go to yours.

That's a pretty material commitment on the linking site's part, and the only incentive they have to do that is if they believe that your content is of value to their site's visitors.

Why not social signals? While I've long argued that they have no impact except for aiding in content discovery, let's for sake of argument say that I'm wrong, and there is some impact here, and explain why social signals can never be a critical part of the Google algo. It's simple: social signals are under the control of third-party companies that can make them invisible to Google on a moment's notice (and remember that Google and Facebook are NOT friends). Imagine Google giving Facebook (or any other 3rd party) the power to break their algorithm whenever they want. Not happening!

2. The power of links should cause different actions on your part.

What is that action? It's called marketing, and within that discipline is the concept of content marketing. Done the right way, these are things you should do to raise the reputation and visibility of your brand.

In fact, this may consume a material amount of your entire company budget. With or without search engines in the world, you've always wanted to do two things:

(1) Make really good stuff, and

(2) market it effectively.

In 2016, and beyond, this will not change.

No doubt, part of attracting great links is to produce great content, but there are other overt actions involved to tell the world about that great content, such as active outreach programs.

Expanding on user engagement

Many have speculated that Google is using user engagement signals as a ranking factor, and that it will increase its investment in these areas over time. For example, what about click-through rate (CTR)? I discuss CTR as a ranking factor here, but to net it out simply, it's just too easy a signal to game, and Google tells us that it uses CTR measurements as a quality control check on other ranking signals, rather than as a direct signal.

You can doubt Google's statements about this, but if you own or publish a website, you probably get many emails a week offering to sell you links via one scheme or another. However, you never get emails offering you CTR ranking schemes. Why is that, you think? It's because even the scammers and spammers don't think it works.

Important note: Rand has done many live CTR tests and a number of these have shown some short-term rankings movement, so CTR could be used in some manner to discover hot trends/news, but still not be a core ranking factor.

What about other user engagement signals? I'd bet that Google is, in fact, doing some things with user engagement signals, though it's hard to be sure what they are. It's not likely to be as simple as bounce rate, or its cousin, pogosticking.

Pogosticking sure seems like a good signal until you realize there are many scenarios where they don't work at all. For example, when users are comparison shopping, they'll naturally hop from site to site.

Finding good user engagement factors that make for really reliable signals is quite hard. Many have speculated that artificial intelligence/machine learning will be used to derive these types of factors. Here are three pieces of content that cover that topic in some detail:

1. The Machine Learning Revolution: How it Works and its Impact on SEO, an article here on Moz by yours truly
2. SEO in a Two-Algorithm World, a Powerpoint by Rand Fishkin
3. The Past, Present, and Future of SEO, an article by Mike Grehan

Information architecture

Having a solid information architecture (IA) that Google can crawl and easily find your content is also a major requirement. In Andrey Lippatsev's response, he undoubtedly presumed that this was in good shape, but it would be wrong to leave this out of this discussion.

At Stone Temple Consulting, we've helped tons of sites improve their organic traffic simply by working on their IA, eliminating excessive page counts, improving their use of SEO tags like rel=canonical, and things of this nature. This is clearly a big factor as well. Usability also feeds into IA, because people need to be able to find what they're looking for on your site.

What I've left out with the two-factor model

First of all, there are other types of results, such as images, videos, and maps results, that are opportunities to get on the first page, but the above discussion is focused on how to rank in regular web search results.

To be fair, even in the regular web results, I've left some things out. Here are some examples of those:

1. Local links. I'm not referring to "local pack" listings here. If I search on "digital cameras" right now, in the regular web search results, I'll see some listings for stores near me. Clearly, proximity is a very large factor in ranking those pages.
2. Query deserves diversity. An example of this is the query "Jaguar." Chances are that my two-factor algorithm would rank only car sites in the top 10, but Google knows that many people that type that query want information on the animal. So even if the two-factor algo would slant things one way, you'll see some animal-related sites in the top 10.
3. In-depth articles. This is a feature that's hard to spot in the search results, but sometimes Google includes in the bottom of the top 10 results some pieces of content that are particularly comprehensive. These are for queries where Google recognizes there's a decent chance that the user is engaging in extensive research on a topic. Here's an example for the query "constitution":

We conducted a small sample review of 200 SERPs and found that about 6% of the results appeared to be from factors such as these. The two-factor model also doesn't account for personalization, but this post is looking at ranking factors for regular search results other than personalization, which, of course, also has a large impact.

Looking for ranking hacks?

OK, I'm going to give you one. Make your content, and the experience of consuming that content, unbelievably good. That's step one. Stick to your knitting, folks, and don't cop out on the effort to make your content stand out. You have no choice if you want to get sustainably positive results from SEO.

Don't forget the overall site and page usability, as that's a big part of what makes your content consumable. This is a critical part of making great content. So is measuring user engagement. This provides a critical feedback loop into what you're doing, and whether or not it's working for your target audience.

Then, and only then, your focus should turn to marketing that will help drive your reputation and visibility, and help attract links to your content. Here it is in a nutshell:

If your content isn't competitive in relevance and quality, links won't help. If it is, links will make the difference.

Your content has to be elite to have a chance to score highly on any given competitive search result. After that, your superior marketing efforts will help you climb to the top of the heap.

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SearchCap: Google review guidelines, Panda mode & more

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google review guidelines, Panda mode & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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With Panda in stealth mode, why Google’s quality updates should be on your algorithmic radar [Part 1]

What are Google's quality updates (aka Phantom updates), and how can you recover? In part one of a two-part series on Phantom, columnist Glenn Gabe explains the history and possible mechanics of these algorithm updates. The post With Panda in stealth mode, why Google’s quality updates should be on...

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Test points to likely influence of click-through rate on search rankings

Columnist Brian Patterson shares the results of a click-through rate test performed on one of the test websites he maintains. The post Test points to likely influence of click-through rate on search rankings appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Google updates local reviews schema guidelines

Now only reviews "directly produced by your site" can have local reviews markup according to Google. The post Google updates local reviews schema guidelines appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Should You Be Outsourcing SEO Training for Your Team?

Posted by rachelgooodmanmoore

When first looking to offer something new, most businesses fall in line with one of two schools of thought:

1. Build it internally
2. Purchase or outsource it

There are pros and cons to both sides of the coin.

Here’s an example: Say you’re looking to expand the selection of products your company sells. Building a new offering in-house would allow you complete control over the size and shape of the new product. The drawback? Building it yourself usually takes significant internal resources and time. If, instead, you chose to purchase a product from another organization (let’s call them Acme Corp) and whitelabel it — or maybe even purchase Acme Corp itself — you’ll be able to go to market sooner, but you’ll almost certainly have less control over the product you’re offering.

The idea of “build internally” or “purchase externally” doesn’t just apply to products — it also includes internal programs like market research, sales strategy development, and even professional training. In fact, it includes almost everything that makes up an organization, from its processes to its people.

Think back to the last product (internal or external) your company released. In which camp is your organization? Whether you go the outsourcing or building in-house route depends on your business and the situation at hand. There are arguments for the merits of both, and some organizations employ a mix of multiple strategies.

Let’s look at some of the considerations and use cases for why you may want to choose one over the other when it comes to training — in particular, SEO training.

Is SEO training unique?

It’s worth examining if (and how) SEO education differs from other flavors of professional training. While SEO training is a different beast than, say, learning to code or how to do business accounting, from my perspective as an online trainer, teaching SEO isn’t remarkably different than teaching any kind of digital marketing.

SEO training: a different type of beast.

At basic and intermediate levels, neither SEO nor digital marketing in general are extremely technical (compared to something like learning JavaScript, MySQL, or setting up a Salesforce CRM), nor do they require an MBA or PhD to master. Both are easier with a fundamental understanding of how websites and the Internet work, and both are at their best when backed by real data and at least a dash of creativity.

SEO versus digital marketing training

Do these two actually differ from each other at all? Search engine optimization is a subset of what digital marketing is all about, so they're related. But there are differences, nonetheless. Let’s take a closer look:

The training face-off

Digital Marketing Education	SEO Education
Focuses on all aspects of how to attract traffic, convert those visitors into leads, and help transform those leads into customers	Mainly focuses on how to best attract visitors
Covers ways to attract visitors from all sources	Deals almost exclusively with increasing or refining traffic from search engines
Deals with topics like email marketing, marketing automation, social media, content creation, and beyond	Hones in on topics like keyword research, site architecture, on- and off-page optimization, and analytics (though may also include topics like content creation as they pertain to generating search traffic)
Typically measures ROI in terms of marketing or sales-qualified leads generated	Most direct ROI numbers are around traffic generated by source (namely search engines or search-influenced sources)

The right column, for our purposes in this article, is how we’ll be defining "SEO training."

Now that we’re on the same page with what we mean when discussing SEO training, let’s dive into the ten-thousand-dollar question*: should you build and run this type of training in-house, or outsource it?

*Yes, some SEO training programs really do cost that much.

Outsourcing: the benefits

Let’s start our tour of outsourcing versus building training in-house by examining the pros of hiring an outside trainer or signing up for an SEO training course:

1. Outsourcing saves time.

Whether it’s hours devoted to developing an SEO curriculum, putting together lessons, actually teaching, or following up with trainees after your session, building and delivering from-scratch training can take an enormous amount of time and effort.

Outsourcing means you get hours in your day back, and because the training is built by professionals, the end product may be higher quality than something built internally.

2. Outsourcing can save you money.

Note "can" (and not "will") save you money. If you only need training one (or a few) time(s), or if you have a relatively small group of people enrolled, it can be significantly more cost-effective to outsource training.

On the other hand, if you have a large number of people to train or plan on offering a course on a regular basis (for example, as part of new hire onboarding), it may be worth the upfront cost to develop in-house training.

3. Outsourcing lets you put more budget towards day-to-day operations.

It may sound counterintuitive, but companies that “run lean” or dedicate the lion’s share of budget to day-to-day operations may not be able to sacrifice the man hours necessary to develop, deliver, and maintain a training program. Outsourcing one is often significantly less expensive for the scale these organizations need.

4. Don’t have an internal expert, but need new internal expertise? No problem.

If you're looking to strengthen existing SEO skills or build your company’s SEO expertise from the ground up, but aren’t ready to hire a search marketing manager just yet, finding a good SEO training course or bringing in an outside trainer can provide the skills you’re looking for.

It's also useful for agencies hoping to offer full SEO services or building an SEO pilot program. Bringing in outside help to train up a few team members on key skills means you don’t need to invest in a net new hire for a program with an uncertain future.

5. Outsourced training makes it easier to reach a remote or multi-lingual team.

It’s as common to hear about companies expanding to open their first satellite office in Beijing as it is to hear that office is in Boston. Thanks to the Internet, today’s world is smaller than ever.

If yours is one of the many companies with international workers or a largely remote workforce, it can be hard to deliver training that’s equally accessible and applicable to everyone. In situations like this — and especially if you have a multilingual workforce — outsourcing training that’s available in various languages can be a great option.

6. Outsourcing may give you access to accreditations or certifications.

Many online and in-person SEO training programs include some sort of certification of completion or proficiency. If that's a priority, you'll want to purchase an in-person or online program from an organization with industry name recognition that offers a certification.

7. Outsourcing gives you access to the best quality educators.

Whether you’re a full-fledged Google algorithm guru or just know your way around a site crawl, no one can argue that you’ve got some SEO chops. You already know the material, so it should be no trouble to whip up some training based on your expertise... right?

Maybe, but maybe not. “Doing” skills are different than teaching skills; being skilled at SEO doesn’t automatically correlate to being skilled at teaching SEO. And, perhaps more importantly, teaching doesn’t automatically lead to learning. Just because you have knowledge to share doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be as successful as possible when helping your colleagues actually learn.

One of the biggest benefits of outsourced training is that it gives you access to professional educators, not just folks with practical experience who educate in their free time.

Outsourcing: the drawbacks

Now that we’ve covered some of the benefits of outsourcing training, let’s give in-house training the same treatment. What are cons of relying on a 3rd-party provider for your SEO training needs?

1. Only relying on outsourced education doesn’t give you any equity.

No, I’m not talking about link equity. The equity I’m referring to here is, metaphorically, the same kind of equity you get from buying a house versus renting an apartment.

As a renter, you’re only paying for access to the property — not an actual stake in it. Buying, on the other hand, may take more effort and investment upfront, but it gives you control (and ownership!) over the actual property itself.

What does this metaphor have to do with in-house versus outsourced training? Only relying on outsourced efforts means you’re continually paying someone else for access to their educational property. If you have training needs that span over many employees or many years, this can get very expensive. In those cases, while it may initially be more costly to develop training in-house, it’s a better long-term investment because of the ‘equity’ it provides.

2. Outsourcing training doesn’t always scale with growing businesses.

Plan ahead for the long-term: If you're growing your organization and plan on having multiple people involved in creating optimized content for your website, it may be a better long-term investment to build in-house training that grows with your team.

3. Outsourced training generally focuses on best practices and one-size-fits-most processes.

Most training programs center on teaching “best practices” or general strategies. If you have a specific process or way of doing SEO, it may be difficult (if not impossible) for an outside trainer to communicate your optimization process — in your terms, using your tools — to your team. For some organizations, that alone may be enough to tilt the scales towards creating all training in-house.

4. Have specific content needs? Building your own curriculum may be your best bet.

Related to having unique processes, having specific content needs also may mean that outsourcing training isn’t the best bet for you. Only want to learn about optimizing content for mobile search engines and advanced link building strategies, but don’t want to have to pay for access to 30 other courses to get the two you do? While some training providers can build a fully custom program designed around exactly what you want to learn, many may come as standard “packages” with little flexibility around what you can learn as a whole or within each session.

5. Training for large teams often comes with a large price tag.

Almost any type of purchasable training program — be it pre-recorded videos, live sessions, in-person classroom experiences, or otherwise — are priced on a “per seat” basis. If your team either needs access to multiple sessions, you have many team members who’ll all need access to the same courses, or both, outsourced training can quickly get pricey.

6. Your access to training materials may be limited.

Some SEO training providers place legal restrictions on re-using the their training materials. This means you may not be able to record sessions, download slides, or distribute useful materials to your team. If sharing the educational love with your coworkers is a deal breaker for you, consider creating and running your SEO training in-house. If you’re still leaning towards using an outside provider, be sure to read their FAQs or legal materials before pulling the trigger.

Key questions to ask

While there are many benefits of outsourcing your SEO training needs, depending on your specific needs there may be an equal number of drawbacks. When considering the right training route for your team it’s worth taking the time to consider questions like:

• How many people need to take this training right now? And over the next one to two years?
• Do I have the internal expertise (or access to it) to create high quality training myself?
• Will it cost me more to build training than it’s currently worth?
• Will it take me longer to build training than value it will provide?
• When do I need my employees trained by? Do I have time to wait, or is there an immediate need?
• Do I need a general SEO training program, one that focuses on specific topics, or one that details my unique process?
• Are the outsourced training options available to me worth the price? What do they include?
• Is it important to get some sort of certification, badge, or other certificate of proficiency upon completion of the training?

The answers to these questions may not give you a black-and-white answer as to whether building training in-house or finding an outside provider is the best choice for you, but they can help make the decision a bit less murky.

Thinking of going the outsourced route for some (or all) of your team’s SEO training? Check out Moz Academy’s online workshops and custom training options.

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