SEO Success in 2021 - #IWES2021

#seo2021 by @aleyda from @orainti for #IWES2021
SEO SUCCESS

https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites
Google is
the 1st Web
property in
traffic
 
of the Web

SEMrush
YouTube NYTimes eBay Apple Bank of America
Organic search is the top traffic channel
 
of big brands after direct…

SEMrush
Zillow Hubspot Pinterest LinkedIn Reddit
… has been fundamental for some
 
of the best known startups growth

https://www.advancedwebranking.com/ctrstudy/
Most of organic clicks from Google searches
 
are still attracted by the top 3 positions

It’s critical then
to be ranked at
the top
 
for your relevant
queries…

Making the most out of the Google Search
Features to maximize visibility and CTR
Image Results
Recipes Video Results
Products Results
Reviews

There’s more competition than before though
and ranking at the top is not getting easier!

Let’s go through core areas to
focus your SEO efforts to win in
2021

Let’s maximize…

1. Aligning SEO Efforts with your
Product Triangle for an Strategic
Approach

SEO is not about
optimizing
disconnected
technical, content and
link popularity aspects
of your site following a
checklist of best
practices without
prioritizing
?

SEO is multidisciplinary and needs to optimize
technical, content, promotion aspects of your site…
FAST SITE
SPEED
STRUCTURED

DATA THAT SPECIFIES
CONTENT
MEANING
BACKLINKS INTERNAL LINKS
MULTIDEVICE
FRIENDLY
INDEXABLE
CONTENT
POPULARITY
RELEVANCE
CRAWLABILITY & INDEXABILITY
AUDIENCE
SEARCH
BEHAVIOR
RELEVANT,
COMPREHENSIVE TEXT,
VIDEO & IMAGE
CONTENT THAT
FULFILLS SEARCH
INTENT
CRAWLABLE
NAVIGATION &
CONTENT
SECURE
WEBSITE
NO INTRUSIVE
AND STABLE
LAYOUT
CONTENT EXPERTISE,
AUTHORITATIVENESS,
TRUSTWORTHINESS

… for which it’s critical to align with the different
areas involved, product goals and context
FAST SITE
SPEED
STRUCTURED

DATA THAT SPECIFIES
CONTENT
MEANING
BACKLINKS INTERNAL LINKS
MULTIDEVICE
FRIENDLY
INDEXABLE
CONTENT
AUDIENCE
SEARCH
BEHAVIOR
RELEVANT,
COMPREHENSIVE TEXT,
VIDEO & IMAGE
CONTENT THAT
FULFILLS SEARCH
INTENT
CRAWLABLE
NAVIGATION &
CONTENT
SECURE
WEBSITE
NO INTRUSIVE
AND STABLE
LAYOUT
CONTENT EXPERTISE,
AUTHORITATIVENESS,
TRUSTWORTHINESS
PR/SOCIAL/CONTENT MARKETING
CONTENT STRATEGY/
COPYWRITING/CONTENT
MARKETING/WEB
DEVELOPMENT
WEB DESIGN/WEB
DEVELOPMENT/
DEVOPS
AUDIENCE RESEARCH / MONITORING
POPULARITY
RELEVANCE
CRAWLABILITY & INDEXABILITY
WEB MEASURE

Integrating SEO
within the Website
product triangle
should be the base
for the SEO process
to set a strategy
that leverages
existing efforts and
achieve goals that
matter

What will you achieve with it?
Avoid
implementing
“disconnected” SEO
Tactics that won’t
help you to achieve
your goals
Be more
effective when
setting an SEO
strategy aligned with
the company’s
business,
functionalities and
growth goals
Align efforts and
gain support across
the different areas/
departments

Start by asking fundamental
questions:

๏ What’s the ultimate business &
growth goal to achieve with the
overall SEO efforts?

๏ How’s SEO success measured?

๏ How each of the SEO activities in
place help to achieve the desired
goal?

๏ How to prioritize your SEO activities
to achieve the desired goal faster and
cost-efficiently?
PRIORITIZE

How SEO affects
and is affected by
the company’s other
growth/marketing
efforts?
How SEO affects and
is affected by the site
features/functionality?
How SEO affects
and is affected by
business/sales?
… while taking into consideration your product and
organization context

Allowing SEO activities to be prioritized based
 
on impact & difficulty to achieve goals
The affected areas
The SEO effect
The business importance
Current optimization
Required resources
Known restrictions
Scope
IMPACT DIFFICULTY

Take a look at these SEO resources for more!
https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-
optimization/seo-product-triangle/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SzJ0oVFor8
https://www.kevin-indig.com/blog/creating-an-
seo-strategy-from-scratch/

2. Understand and connect with your
audience search Intent to become the
best comprehensive answer for the
queries that actually matter

Why?
 
Avoid losing
rankings with
Google Core
Algorithm updates
and start correctly
fulfilling users
search intent that
will not only
perform but
convert better

Understand
how your
audience search
through the customer
journey and the
different type of
information they
look for to fulfill
their needs
Better develop,
structure, organize
and format your
content to fulfill the
user search needs and
intent
Establish your
Web content/
offering expertise
and trustworthiness
to fulfill the
audience needs

Identify the intent
of the queries,
analyze the
“anatomy” of the
SERP and the
characteristics of
the already well
ranked pages, to
better detect the
queries to target

Address meaningful
queries with the
relevant content type,
format and structure/
organization across
your content funnel…
What is Python? Guides & Topics Pages
[Informational]
brand.com/topics/python
brand.com/topics/python/use-cases/
Category Pages
[Transactional]
brand.com/courses/python/
brand.com/courses/python/certificates/
Products Pages
[Navigational]
brand.com/programs/python/
56,1K Searches/Month/Global
What is Python used for?
Learn Python online
Best Python online courses
650 Searches/Month/Global
Brand Python Course review
200 Searches/Month/Global
Is Brand a good Python course?
SEARCH JOURNEY VS. CONTENT FUNNEL
AWARENESS
CONSIDERATION
PURCHASE

Structuring and
aligning the content to
offer comprehensive
information to fulfill
users search need vs.
your competitors,
while supporting the
customer journey …
https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/optimizing-content-in-category-pages-while-keeping-its-commercial-nature/

… in a way that
establishes your
expertise,
authority and
trustworthiness in
your subject
matter with your
audience
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12-F9Z4NzDADOFRQtOiN-CtjY2aaqj-R5CcrJNCuTha4/edit#gid=0

https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/crawling-mondays/how-to-prune-your-website-content-in-an-seo-process-crawlingmondays-16th-episode/
Do you have
content that is not
worthy to index,
rank and optimize
anymore? Prune
accordingly!

https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-
optimization/seo-product-triangle/
https://sitebulb.com/resources/guides/
the-importance-of-topic-clusters/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-
to-improve-your-websites-e-a-t/374212/

3. Expand your Visibility Share
leveraging Google’s Search Features
and Discover

Why?
 
Most of search results
for competitive
queries that matter
will likely be featuring
a search feature,
including information
to better fulfill users
search intent

Many of these content
types, such as videos,
products feeds or
Web stories will also
allow you to leverage
additional Google
platforms/verticals,
eg: YouTube (videos),
Discover (Web
Stories), Shopping Tab
(Products)

Improved SERPs
visibility and CTR
through the relevant
search features for
your targeted
queries
Expanded reach
through additional
platforms depending
on the content
formats
Better inform
Google about the
content meaning
via structured data

What search features are included in mobile and
desktop search results for your targeted queries?
SEMrush

Which are relevant for
my content to
leverage taking into
consideration my
goals and are feasible
to optimize or develop
complying with
technical and editorial
guidelines?
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/mobile/google-discover

Which of these efforts will allow to expand your
content reach outside of Google’s SERPs?

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/
appearance/overview
https://support.google.com/merchants/
answer/9668403
https://wordlift.io/blog/en/optimize-for-
google-discover/

4. Grow and Leverage Your
Brand Authority to Develop
your Search Popularity

Why?
 
Because building and
leveraging your brand
is likely the best way
to build and scale your
link popularity while
following Google’s
guidelines

Actions to promote
and communicate
what the company is
doing to establish its
brand awareness and
authority, from useful
guides, handy tools,
industry studies and
reports, new features
releases, etc.

The link popularity
and a share of the
authority you need to
rank for competitive
queries Branded searches to
maximize your visibility
and own much more
easily
Direct traffic and
conversions

Key questions to ask
What’s your Unique
Selling Proposition?
How do you want to
be known as a
brand?
What does your
audience like to share
and link to? Where do
they do it? Who do
they follow and
read?
How, where and
with whom should
you promote your
assets/resources to
be covered?

There are some amazing examples out there
 
gathered by the awesome Neomam team
https://neomam.com/blog/jealousy-list-2020/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt8db_rOwdc
https://neomam.com/blog/link-
prospecting/
https://www.aira.net/state-of-link-building/

Let’s minimize…

1. Giving a bad user Web experience

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/testmysite/
A slow Web experience makes you lose money!

You want to facilitate
your users journey on
your site with a fast,
mobile friendly, non-
intrusive experience.
Page experience is
becoming a ranking factor
in May!

https://web.dev/vitals/
With Core Web Vitals we have now
 
clearer metrics to focus on!

https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2020/seo
Many sites have important issues

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P9V_8fDge-fov6CPahS3BST-dq4P_gi5YVANHH4Bpy8/edit?usp=sharing
Thankfully, there
are so many free
tools to help us
measure and
identify the most
important issues to
fix!

… and even to compare with other sites and do a bulk
assessment of your own site pages
https://twitter.com/aleyda/status/1337390355503833089

You can leverage
plugins (like WP
Rocket)
 
and CDNs (like
Cloudflare) to
optimize your
speed to
facilitate the
implementation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwTA8pHeQKw https://seosly.com/core-web-vitals-audit/ https://www.onely.com/blog/page-experience/

2. Generating unnecessary technical
barriers for your content to be
indexed and ranked

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=angularjs%2Cangular%2Creactjs%2Cvue.js
In the last few years, there has been an important
increase in the usage of JavaScript Frameworks

Unfortunately, the
reliance on JS
frameworks for Web
navigation and content
that could be
implemented via HTML
has added additional
“barriers” to search
crawlers
HTML Based Navigation is implemented

… This can really end up hurting your Website rankings

https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2020/seo
There is a non-trivial
difference in the
content shown in raw
vs. rendered HTML
across the Web

Are you relying on
client side rendering
to feature (add,
change eliminate)
meaningful content,
SEO related
configuration or links?
Identify potential gaps
to close them!
Sitebulb

Take a look at these SEO resources to learn how!
https://www.contentkingapp.com/
academy/javascript-seo/
https://www.onely.com/blog/ultimate-guide-
javascript-seo/
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/
advanced/crawling/large-site-managing-
crawl-budget

3. Solving SEO Implementation
Blockers and Issues with a Healthy
SEO Framework and Agile Process
leveraging automation

https://www.slideshare.net/aleydasolis/what-makes-your-seo-fail-and-how-to-fix-it-brightonseo
Most SEO
processes fail
because of lack of
implementation
support due to
budget or technical
restrictions

This shouldn’t be an issue if you effectively prioritize
 
the SEO process activities strategically …
HIGH PRIORITY
 
HIGH IMPACT WITH LOW DIFFICULTY
MEDIUM PRIORITY
 
HIGH IMPACT WITH MEDIUM DIFFICULTY
 
MEDIUM IMPACT WITH LOW DIFFICULTY
LOW PRIORITY

MEDIUM IMPACT WITH MEDIUM DIFFICULTY

HIGH IMPACT WITH HIGH DIFFICULTY
DON’T PRIORITIZE

MEDIUM IMPACT WITH HIGH DIFFICULTY

LOW IMPACT
IMPACT
1
3
2
+ DIFFICULTY
+
-
2
3

1ST ITERATION:
 
LOW COMPETITION
QUERIES
AUDIENCE &
COMPETITIVE
RESEARCH
TECHNICAL &
CONTENT
OPTIMIZATION
SEO RESULTS
MEASUREMENT
LINK BUILDING
CAMPAIGN
1
2
3
4 2ND ITERATION:
MEDIUM
 
COMPETITION
QUERIES
AUDIENCE &
COMPETITIVE
RESEARCH
TECHNICAL &
CONTENT
OPTIMIZATION
SEO RESULTS
MEASUREMENT
LINK BUILDING
CAMPAIGN
2
3
4
1
… to start seeing results faster with an iterative/
incremental development…

seomonitor
… with high impact
and lower difficulty
changes in those
pages to rank for
meaningful queries,
for which we can do
projections to show
what the expected
traffic would cost if
you were spending in
paid search

It’s also critical to be consistent and avoiding
 
errors in the on-going SEO implementation

There are so many
of them that I
started a
#SEOhorrorstories
hashtag a few years
ago to share stories
between SEOs…

https://www.slideshare.net/aleydasolis/the-worst-technical-seo-nightmares-and-how-to-avoid-them
.. and go through
the (rather
recurrent) issues
in a yearly
presentation

These can be avoided establishing a
 
“Healthy SEO Framework” within the company
https://www2.slideshare.net/aleydasolis/the-worst-technical-seo-nightmares-and-how-to-avoid-them

INDEXABLE CATEGORY PAGES WITH <3 INVENTORY & NO SPECIFIC DESCRIPTION
HAS > N
TRAFFIC
OBFUSCATE LINKS,
ELIMINATE FROM XML
SITEMAPS AND
CANONICALIZE PARENT
CATEGORY
TARGETS
QUERY > Y
SEARCH
VOLUME
HAS
FEATURED >3
PRODUCTS IN
LAST X
MONTHS
NO
YES
NO YES
YES
NO
KEEP INDEXED AND
ADD SPECIFIC
DESCRIPTION
Implementing
automated
validations within
the Web platform to
follow SEO best
practices

To follow a validation workflow before
 
and after releasing any change
PRE-
RELEASE SEO
VALIDATION:
OK?
SEO
IMPLEMENTATION
YES
NO
YES
ON-GOING
SEO
VALIDATION
SEO
RELEASE
NO
FIX
POST-
RELEASE SEO
VALIDATION:
OK?
YES
NO
FIX
FIX
ON-GOING
SEO VALIDATION:
OK?

.. setting real time SEO monitoring and alerts systems,
 
to be warned if anything changes unexpectedly
ContentKing, Little Warden

To protect your organic search results from this
To Avoid This

… at the end, it’s
about an aligned
and effective
execution to
achieve results

Maximizing what will have a bigger SEO
impact…
SEO +
Product
Alignment
Understanding
+ Fulfilling
Audience Intent
Leverage
Search
Features +
Discover
Growing
Brand
Authority

…and minimizing biggest SEO challenges
Bad user
experience
Technical
barriers towards
crawling &
indexing
SEO
Implementation
Blockers

Take a look at the full article covering
this and more!
https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/seo-success-this-year/

It’s time to achieve SEO results in 2021

https://learningseo.io/
Are you just starting in SEO?
 
Take a look at LearnSEO.io

https://www.seofomo.co/
.. and Subscribe
to the
#SEOFOMO
Newsletter to
keep updated
with the latest in
SEO too

Thanks! Ask me Anything
* SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti

* SEO Speaker at +100 Events in +20 countries

* Author “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales.”

* Crawling Mondays YouTube SEO Video Series Host

* Blogger in Search Engine Land & Search Engine Journal

* European Search Personality of the Year in 2018

* #SEOFOMO Newsletter Wrapper

SEO Success in 2021 - #IWES2021

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