The world of search engine optimization is changing faster than ever, thanks to artificial intelligence, and marketers are clamoring for new updates to websites to meet these changes. What changes are most important to the website and how do you manage these? What should you be proactive about, and how do you stay on track with an ever-evolving discipline? Learning Objectives & Outcomes: In this session, attendees will learn the key points behind the biggest changes in search, and the common requests they'll hear from their marketing teams. Attendees will leave equipped to speak to these requests and prioritize according to their capacity and impact on site performance.

1. SEO! Snippets! Schema!
– What is going on?
Diane Kulseth
SEO Consultant at Siteimprove

2. First…a little about me

3. Diane Kulseth
SEO Consultant
Siteimprove
• Specializing in SEO and digital
strategy for nearly 10 years
• < 4 months working at
Siteimprove
• Has worked with Fortune 500
companies, B2B, Healthcare,
Higher Ed, Non-profit, Start-ups,
Agencies, and more

4. A story…

6. Help you speak
(even more)
knowledgeably to
the topic of SEO
when advocating
for your time and
efforts
My goal:

7. Agenda
Your SEO
Efforts
The SEO
Pyramid
Key
Updates
Prioritizing
Your Work
Building
Harmony
with
Marketing

8. Before we get started

9. Drupal SEO Tools
Real-Time SEO for Drupal
Yoast SEO for Drupal
Do any of these
plugins sound
familiar?

10. Pathauto
Page Title
Meta Tag
Redirect/Global Redirect
Content Optimizer
Do any of these
modules sound
familiar?

11. Most plugins/modules
only scratch the surface

12. Keyword
Research &
Targeting
Accessible, Quality
Content

13. Keyword
Research &
Targeting

14. • On-site user engagement features
• Social media marketing
Social
• Manual requests
• Link Creation
• Scalable, Content-Based Link Strategies
Link
Building
• Keyword Brainstorming
• Content Targeting – Meta Content,
URLs, Headings, Internal Anchor Text
Keyword
Research &
Targeting
• Unique Text Content
• Sitemaps
• Internal Link Architecture
• Bot Accessibility
• URL Structure
• Server Response Codes
Accessible,
Quality Content

15. Which one ranks better?

16. Which one ranks better?
Disorganized content With links pointed to the page
Organized content No links pointed to the page

17. Which one ranks better?

18. Make Your Content
Accessible

19. First up…
User Experience Speed Mobile Experience Redirect Cleaning

20. Easy to understand
navigation
Pages reachable within 5-6
clicks of your homepage
No broken links
Alt text on images
Speed >
User
Experience

21. Compression (GZIP)
Minimizing HTML and CSS
Minimizing Redirects
Images under 1MB
Speed

22. Viewport enabled
Tap targets >= 48 CSS
pixels wide
Reducing Flash content
Mobile

23. Reduce loops or chains
Check for 302s
Ensure all are on
consistent protocol (HTTP
vs. HTTPS)
Redirects

24. Check your work!
Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools
Check indexation compared to sitemap pages
# of pages crawled per day
Time to download
Use Fetch as Google to help get attention on the page

25. What else should I
know?

26. Key Search Engine Changes
SEO

27. Key Search Engine Changes
2011: Panda
Spammy, thin content
SEO

28. Key Search Engine Changes
2011: Panda
Spammy, thin content
SEO

29. Key Search Engine Changes
2011: Panda
Spammy, thin content
2012: Penguin
Links from spammy sites,
keyword stuffing
SEO

30. Key Search Engine Changes
2011: Panda
Spammy, thin content
2012: Penguin
Links from spammy sites,
keyword stuffing
2015: Mobilegeddon
Optimized mobile experiences
SEO

31. Key Search Engine Changes
2011: Panda
Spammy, thin content
2012: Penguin
Links from spammy sites,
keyword stuffing
2015: Mobilegeddon
Optimized mobile experiences
SEO

32. Key Search Engine Changes
2011: Panda
Spammy, thin content
2012: Penguin
Links from spammy sites,
keyword stuffing
2015: Mobilegeddon
Optimized mobile experiences
2015: RankBrain
Improved matching of user intent
with AI & Machine Learning
SEO

33. Every day, 15% of searches
to Google are new to even
Google
If RankBrain sees
something it’s not familiar
with, it makes a guess to
what has a similar meaning
and filters results
accordingly*
What does
that mean?
*Bloomberg, October 2015

34. This helps Google to
understand how people
navigate the web at an
unprecendented speed
What does
that mean?
*Bloomberg, October 2015

35. Optimize with the user in
mind
How do we stay current
if everything is moving?

36. What are these?

37. Knowledge Graph
Information curated from multiple sources
Presented to users on the right side of search
results on desktop or at the top on mobile

38. Featured
Snippets
Different than Knowledge Graph –
curated from one source
The top result for both desktop and
mobile
Often a short answer, and often used
for voice searches

39. Great…so what do I
have to do for those?

40. Featured
Snippets?
Well-organized
- Bulleted or numbered lists
- Answers a query
- Answer is at the top of the content
- Most work is with content
teams
- Schema markup is also helpful

41. Knowledge Graph
Schema markup for most results:
- Biographies
- Articles
Citations on local directories:
- Yelp
- Google My Business
Collaboration between developers and digital
marketers

42. Schema.org
Provide structured data for different entities on the internet:
- Book
- Movie
- Recipe
- Place
- Article
- Review
- Event
Also on
GitHub!
(schemaorg)

43. Check your work!
Google Search Console
Search Appearance for errors or areas to improve

44. Prioritizing Everything

45. Different Prioritizations
Occurrences
Resource capacity
Sprint priorities
Other business objectives

47. Running is not
recommended!
Share what your priorities are
– involve them in sprints if
desired!
Ensure the pages in question
are first accessible
Ask them about perceived
impact to search results &
business metrics
Creating
Harmony
with
Marketing

48. Thank you!