Friday, July 17, 2020

What is SEO in 2020?



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Core Web Vitals: The Next Official Google Ranking Factor - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

There's a new ranking factor in town: Core Web Vitals. Expected in 2021, this Google-announced algorithm change has a few details you should be aware of. Cyrus Shepard dives in this week on Whiteboard Friday.

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Cyrus Shepard here at Moz. Today we're talking about the next official Google ranking factor — Core Web Vitals. Now what do I mean by official ranking factor?

Google makes hundreds of changes a year. Every week they introduce new changes to their algorithm. Occasionally they announce ranking factor changes. They do this in particular when something is important or they want to encourage people, webmasters to make changes to their site beforehand. They do this for important things like HTTPS and other signals.

So this is one they actually announced. It's confusing to a lot of people, so I wanted to try to demystify what this ranking signal means, what we can do to diagnose and prepare for it, and basically get in a place where we're ready for things to happen. So what is it? Big first question. 

What are Core Web Vitals?

So these are real-world experience metrics that Google is looking at, that answer things like: How fast does the page load? How fast is it interactive? How fast is it stable? So basically, when visitors are using your web page on a mobile or a desktop device, what's that experience like in terms of speed, how fast can they interact with it, things like that.

Now it's joining a group of metrics that Google calls Page Experience signals. It's not really a standalone. It's grouped in with these Page Experience metrics that are separate from the text on the page. So these are signals like mobile friendliness, HTTPS, intrusive interstitials, which are those pop-ups that come on and appear.

It's not so much about the text of the page, which are traditional ranking signals, but more about the user experience and what it's like, how pleasant it is to use the page, how useful it is. These are especially important on mobile when sometimes the speed isn't as high. So that's what Google is measuring here. So that's what it is.

Where is this going to affect rankings? 

Well, it's going to affect all regular search results, mobile and desktop, based on certain criteria. But also, and this is an important point, Core Web Vitals are going to become a criteria to appear in Google Top Stories. These are the news results that usually appear at the top of search results.

Previously, AMP was a requirement to appear in those Top Stories. AMP is going away. So you still have to meet the requirements for regular Google News inclusion, but AMP is not going to be a requirement anymore to appear in Top Stories. But you are going to have to meet a minimum threshold of Core Web Vitals.

So that's an important point. So this could potentially affect a lot of ranking results. 

When is it going to happen? 

Well, Google has told us that it's going to happen sometime in 2021. Because of COVID-19, they have pushed back the release of this within the algorithm, and they want to give webmasters extra time to prepare.

They have promised us at least six months' notice to get ready. As of this recording, today we have not received that six-month notice. When that updates, we will update this post to let you know when that's going to be. So anytime Google announces a ranking factor change, the big question is: 

How big of a change is this going to be?

How much do I have to worry about these metrics, and how big of results are we going to see shift in Google SERPs? Well, it's important to keep in mind that Google has hundreds of ranking signals. So the impact of any one signal is usually not that great. That said, if your site is particularly poor at some of these metrics, it could make a difference.

If you're in a highly competitive environment, competing against people for highly competitive terms, these can make a difference. So it probably is not going to be huge based on past experience with other ranking signals, but it is still something that we might want to address especially if you're doing pretty poorly.

The other thing to consider, some Google signals have outsized impact beyond their actual ranking factors. Things like page speed, it's probably a pretty small signal, but as users experience it, it can have outsized influence. Google's own studies show that for pages that meet these thresholds of Core Web Vitals, visitors are 24% less likely to abandon the site.

So even without Core Web Vitals being an official Google ranking factor, it can still be important because it provides a better user experience. Twenty-four percent is like gaining 24% more traffic without doing anything, simply by making your site a little more usable. So even without that, it's probably still something we want to consider.

Three signals for Core Web Vitals

So I want to jump briefly into the specifics of Core Web Vitals, what they're measuring. I think people get a little hung up on these because they're very technical. Their eyes kind of glaze over when you talk about them. So my advice would be let's not get hung up on the actual specifics. But I think it is important to understand, in layman's terms, exactly what's being measured.

More importantly, we want to talk about how to measure, identify problems, and fix these things if they happen to be wrong. So very briefly, there are three signals that go into Core Web Vitals. 

1. Largest contentful paint (LCP)

The first being largest contentful paint (LCP). This basically asks, in layman's terms, how fast does the page load? Very easy concept. So this is hugely influenced by the render time, the largest image, video, text in the viewport.

That's what Google is looking at. The largest thing in the viewport, whether it be a desktop page or a mobile page, the largest piece of content, whether it be an image, video or text, how fast does that take to load? Very simple. That can be influenced by your server time, your CSS, JavaScript, client side rendering.

All of these can play a part. So how fast does it load? 

2. Cumulative shift layout (CSL)

The second thing, cumulative shift layout (CSL). Google is asking with this question, how fast is the page stable? Now I'm sure we've all had an experience where we've loaded a page on our mobile phone, we go to click a button, and at the last second it shifts and we hit something else or something in the page layout has an unexpected layout shift.

That's poor user experience. So that's what Google is measuring with cumulative shift layout. How fast is everything stable? The number one reason that things aren't stable is that image sizes often aren't defined. So if you have an image and it's 400 pixels wide and tall, those need to be defined in the HTML. There are other reasons as well, such as animations and things like that.

But that's what they're measuring, cumulative shift layout. 

3. First input delay (FID)

Third thing within these Core Web Vitals metrics is first input delay (FID). So this question is basically asking, how fast is the page interactive? To put it another way, when a user clicks on something, a button or a JavaScript event, how fast can the browser start to process that and produce a result?

It's not a good experience when you click on something and nothing happens or it's very slow. So that's what that's measuring. That can depend on your JavaScript, third-party code, and there are different ways to dig in and fix those. So these three all together are Core Web Vitals and play into the page experience signals. So like I said, let's not get hung up on these.

How to measure & fix

Let's focus on what's really important. If you have a problem, how do you measure how you're doing with Core Web Vitals, and how do you fix those issues? Google has made it very, very simple to discover. The first thing you want to do is look in Search Console. They have a new report there — Core Web Vitals. They will tell you all your URLs that they have in their index, whether they're poor, needs improvement, or good.

If you have URLs that are poor or needs improvement, that's when you want to investigate and find out what's wrong and how you can improve those pages. Every report in Search Console links to a report in Page Speed Insights. This is probably the number-one tool you want to use to diagnose your problems with Core Web Vitals.

It's powered by Lighthouse, a suite of performance metric tools. You want to focus on the opportunities and diagnostics. Now I'm going to be honest with you. Some of these can get pretty technical. You may need a web developer who is an expert in page speed or someone else who can comfortably address these problems if you're not very technical.

We have a number of resources here on the Moz Blog dealing with page speed. We'll link to those in the comments below. But generally, you want to go through and you want to address each of these opportunities and diagnostics to improve your Core Web Vitals score and get these out of poor and needs improvement into good. Now if you don't have access to Search Console, Google has put these reports in many, many tools across the web.

Lighthouse, of course, you can run for any page. Chrome Dev Tools, the Crux API. All of these are available and resources for you to find out exactly how your site is performing with Core Web Vitals and go in and we have until sometime in 2021 to address these things. All right, that's it.

That's Core Web Vitals in a nutshell. We've got more than six months to go. Get ready. At least at a very minimum dive in and see how your site is performing and see if we can find some easy wins to get our sites up to speed. All right. Thanks, everybody.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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How to show up on Google Discover: Google’s latest guidance

The updated doc has guidance around article titles, enabling high-quality large images and having timely, engaging content.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.


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Thursday, July 16, 2020

Writer onboarding and brand guidelines: The unsung heroes of content marketing success [Video]

The upfront prep work you need to do when working with contract content writers.

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Google Search drops tweet carousels after Twitter hack

Twitter had a serious and concerning security event Wednesday. Google has since removed tweets from its search results.

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Back to basics: How to manage your brand through a crisis

Here are some opportunities to protect – and even greatly improve – the reputation of your business and its approach with customers.

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That's a Wrap: MozCon Virtual 2020 Day Two Recap

Posted by cheryldraper

Wow! What a crazy ride MozCon has been this year. In case you missed it, we were able to double the number of attendees and include over 2,800 people.

Not only were we able to include them, we were also able to see their families, pets, and home offices. It was an unusual experience for sure, but one we won’t be forgetting any time soon.

As always, the speakers served up some flaming hot content (including an actual movie). We can’t wait to share some of these takeaways with you!

Britney Muller — Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney started off by assuring everyone that they absolutely can use machine learning. She knows this because she was able to teach her dad how to use it!

Let’s jump right in.

Basically, machine learning can be used for a lot of things.

Britney suggests starting with a notebook in Colaboratory for increased accessibility. She showed us to do the basics like upload, import, and download data before jumping into the fun stuff:

  • Using Google NLP API to extract entities and their categories from URL
  • Using Facebook’s Prophet data for time-series predictions
  • Keyword research using Search Console Data and a filtering function

Honestly, we were surprised at how easy she made machine learning look. Can’t wait to try it ourselves!

Izzi Smith — How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Not all clicks are created equal! While you may want as many clicks as possible from the SERP, there’s a specific type of click you should be striving for — the almighty long click.

“What is a click without the intent to be there?”

Google’s patent clearly states that reactions to search results are gauged, and short interactions (clicks) can lower rankings while longer interactions (clicks) can lead to higher rankings.

Are you ready to track your clicks and get to work? Good! Izzi broke it all down for you:

  1. Pull your data from Google Search Console, specifically by using their API.
  2. Know what you are looking for BEFORE getting into the data.
  3. Look for these patterns:
    1. Performance-based core update impacts — decrease in positions and impressions
    2. Identifying Irrelevant rankings — large impression spike (with low CTR) then a sharp decline in impressions
    3. Losing SERP feature — a sharp decrease in CTR and a decrease in impressions

Izzi, you’re a rockstar! We can’t wait to go play with all of our data later.

Flavilla Fongang — How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla is a true gem. Instead of focusing on the top of the funnel, she focused on how we can keep customers coming back.

She told us that “business is like love”. You don’t want to move too fast. You don’t want to move too slow. You have to add value. You have to keep things exciting.

Flavilla challenged us to find what makes us remarkable:

  • Can you offer a unique experience?
  • Can you create a community?
  • Can you offer integrations?
  • Can you partner with people to bring something new?

Really sit down and think about why you started your brand and reflect on it. If you build a brand people come back to, you’ll have far less to worry about.

Brian Dean — How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

We finally did it! We got Brian Dean to speak at an SEO conference.

If you don’t know him by now, you haven’t been searching hard enough. Brian is a master of content creation and marketing.

It wasn’t always that way, though. Brian’s first blog never took off because he spent more time creating content than he did promoting it. Once he realized just how important promotion was, he went all-in and ended up reaping the benefits.

This year, he finally shared with us some of his Jedi-like promotion tactics.

He shared multiple tips for each of these strategies, but here is a quick summary:

  • Social sites hate it when you post links. Instead, tease the content with a “hook, lead, summary, link, call-to-action”.
  • Ask journalists or bloggers if they’d be interested in reading your pieces, but do so before you publish it to take some pressure off.
  • Actually personalize your outreach by mentioning something on the contact’s site.
  • Boost Facebook posts with ample engagement to audiences who have interacted with previous posts.

Just implementing one of these tactics could change the way your content is received by the internet. Who knows what could happen if you implemented all of them?

Joy Hawkins — Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Not everyone does local SEO, but if you do (or if it ties into what you do at all) you’re going to want to buckle your seatbelt.

Joy showed us some of the insights she was able to pull from a large study she did with her team. They had noticed a major discrepancy in the data between Google My Business and Google Search Console, and wanted to get to the root of it.

Joy shared some major findings:

  1. Google My Business “views” are a lot of different things (not just the traditional impressions we’re used to tracking).
  2. Mobile searches don’t show website icons in the local pack.
  3. The search queries that show up in GMB are different from the ones that are shown in Search Console.
  4. Explicit intent does not always mean higher intent than implicit intent

If you work in local search, Joy wants to challenge you to move away from views and Search Console impressions. Instead, focus on the search data that GMB provides for keywords and on click data in Search Console.

Michael King — Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

In true Michael King style (with a ton of flare), he showed us just what’s possible at a virtual conference and blew our minds with technical SEO awesomeness.

We watched “Jamie” get through the three rings using slick techniques.

There were so many of these, friends!

The thing is, all of this has been out there and accessible, but as Mike says in Runtime, “Doing things the same way everyone else does them is going to get you everyone else's results. Do things your own way."

Dana DiTomaso — Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

The idea of discovery is not a new one, but Dana came ready to shine a new light on an old tactic. Most of us do minimal research before agreeing to do a project — or at least minimal compared to Dana and her team!

These are just a few questions from Kick Point’s discovery process:

  • If there were no limitations, what would you want to be able to say at the end of this project?
  • Which of these metrics affects your performance report?
  • What does your best day ever look like?
  • What didn’t work last time?

The discovery process isn’t just about talking to the client, though, it’s about doing your own research to see if you can find the pain points.

As always, Dana shared some true gems that are sure to make our industry better.

David Sottimano — Everyday Automation for Marketers

David brought us automation greatness all the way from Colombia! There were so many practical applications and all of them required little to no coding:

  • Wit.ai for search intent classification
  • Using cron for scheduling things like scraping
  • Webhooks for passing data
  • Creating your own IFTTT-like automation using n8n.io on Heroku

We got to see live demonstrations of David doing each of these things as he explained them. They all seemed super user-friendly and we can’t wait to try some of them.

Oh yeah, David also helped us build and release the Moz API for Sheets!

Russ Jones — I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Most businesses fail within their first five years, and that failure often comes down to business decisions. Now, Russ doesn’t enjoy all of this decision-making, but he has learned a few things from doing it and then seeing how those decisions affect a business’s bottom line.

The number one way to become more profitable is to cut costs. Russ looked at cutting costs by having fewer full-time employees, renting/owning less space, making leadership changes, and cutting lines of service.

When it comes to actually bringing in more money though, Russ suggests:

  • Adding new service lines
  • Raising prices
  • Automating tasks
  • Acquiring new business

At the end of the day, Russ boiled it down to two things: Don’t be afraid to change, and experiment when you can — not when you must.

Heather Physioc — Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

SEO is not dead, it’s commoditized. A strong line to start off a presentation! We can always count on Heather to bring forth some real business-minded takeaways.

First, she helped us understand what a competitive advantage actually is.

Then, it was time to go through her competitive advantage framework.

As we went through this framework, Heather assigned A LOT of homework:

  • Examine your brand: What do you do? Who do you serve? Why? Find the patterns within the answers.
  • Write a brand statement.
  • Activate your advantage: How can you live it fully? What things can’t you do in support of your purpose? How will you know you’re putting it to work?

She mentioned a lot of great tools throughout her presentation. Get a list of those tools and access to her slides here.

Wil Reynolds — The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Have you ever thought about who holds the fate of the CMO in their hands? Wil started out by explaining that the CEO, CFO, and CIO actually have far more power over marketing than we give them credit for. While they all know that data is what will make their businesses successful, they also hold keys to our success: budget, IT teams/implementations, veto authority.

The issue we face isn’t that we don’t know what we are doing, but more so that we don’t know how to communicate it.

How can you show up to talk the talk and walk the walk? Use your data, and use it to give the customers a voice at the table (something all executive teams are attempting to achieve).

Wil’s team has done an amazing job simplifying and documenting this process for all of us in search. If you haven’t yet, we highly suggest checking out their blog.

That’s a wrap

Folks, this was fun. We’re so happy that we could bring people together from all over the world for two days during this crazy time.

While there weren’t any Roger hugs or fist pumps, there were still lessons learned and friendships made. It doesn’t get any better than that. We hope you feel the same.

If you were able to attend the live conference, we would love to hear your thoughts and takeaways! Be sure to take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and start plans for implementation — we want to see you make a difference with your new knowledge.

Until next year, Moz fans!


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