Are the changes Google is making to marketing a disaster or opportunity for marketers? How do smart webmasters deal with keywords, links and SEO in the face of massive change? In this presentation for Marketing Festival 2013, Cyrus Shepard explains how opportunity abounds and give strategic advice on rising to the top.

1. The Google Earthquake
How to Survive the Future of Search and Online Marketing
Cyrus Shepard
@cyrusshepard

2. As a child, disaster movies scared me

3. Tornados were the worst
Tornados were the worst

4. Disaster?

5. Google is tipping the landscape
changing fast

6. Queries
Led
To
Websites
Google CTR Study - http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/pubs/google-ctr-study/

7. 17.6%
9.94%
7.64%
5.31%
Click
Through
Rate
by
Position
Google CTR Study - http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/pubs/google-ctr-study/

8. All Your
Info
On One
Page

9. Who wants
to be down
here?
?%

14. Organic Results

16. Organic Results

20. Google is eating all the verticals

21. Informational Queries

22. Transactional Queries

23. Media Queries
Books • Videos • Songs

24. Medical Queries

25. http://moz.com/blog/mega-serp

26. Not a real
result, but
demonstrates
how Google’s
new features
often favor
Google
properties
http://moz.com/blog/mega-serp

27. “Google’s mission is to organize the
world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.”
http://www.google.com/about/company/

28. “Google’s mission is to organize the
world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.”
Does not include the words “search engine”
http://www.google.com/about/company/

29. Stomping on SEO
Google is stomping on SEO

30. Global (not provided) at 75%
https://serps.com/data/not_provided

31. Penguin killing links

32. Decreasing
“Domain Diversity measures the percentage of
unique sub-domains across the URLs in the data
set. The less diversity there is, the more domain
"crowding" we observed.”
http://mozcast.com/metrics

33. Disaster?

34. Disaster or opportunity?

35. Disaster or opportunity?

36. Growing Internet Use
92%
of These
Use
Search
Engines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage

37. Rising Desktop Search
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/ & https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AJKohn/posts/52fparZCSrW

38. Rising Mobile Search
http://www.biakelsey.com/

39. Rising Desktop Search
http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/ & https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AJKohn/posts/52fparZCSrW

40. Search Remains an Investment that Pays
Organic Search Traffic to Moz 2011-2013

41. When Combined With Other Channels
It Becomes Unstoppable

42. 6 Strategies for
Future-Proof Results

43. 1. From Keywords to Concepts
because keywords still matter

44. Keywords by themselves don’t rank
Keywords
“pay day loans”
irrelevant and
out of
context
This page
is about exercise
Spam
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

45. 50-80% of Your Traffic Comes From
Keywords You Didn’t Try For
http://moz.com/blog/how-to-rank

46. Google Sells Keywords by Groups
Keyword
groups
focus on a
single
concept

47. Related
Keywords
Sorted by
Relevance
Hmm….
Maybe these
keywords down
here
relate to my
concept

48. Keywords need
context
to rank
Language and
signals focused
around concepts
http://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization

49. 2. From Webpages to Authority

50. Go Above and Beyond the Keyword
The better
answers you
provide, the
more value you
offer.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/thor_the_dark_world/

51. Answer All the Questions
The more
questions you
answer, the less
likely visitors will
search
elsewhere
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00DOQFR96/

52. Publish Regularly on Your Expert Subjects
A single page
does not make
you an authority.
http://moz.com/blog/how-to-rank

53. Use Real People as Subject Experts

54. 3. From Links to Endorsements

55. Newsflash: Google Doesn’t Care About
Your Links

56. What Counts are Your Endorsements

57. Links deemed to have low editorial endorsement can be
devalued, discounted, or even penalized.
Very weak
endorsement

58. Non-editorial links can hurt
Really?
Very weak
endorsement

59. Non-Linking Citations are Endorsements
http://moz.com/blog/2013-local-search-ecosystems

60. This Looks Like an Endorsement
High
Authority Figure
Nofollowed
Social
Mention

61. What About This?
High
Authority Figure
Followed
Link

62. Personalized Results as Endorsements
Jonathon is
connected to me
socially
2 hours ago

63. 4. Markup and Meta Data
real benefits

64. Better Social Sharing
http://moz.com/blog/meta-data-templates-123

65. High Correlation Between Social Sharing
and Rankings
(Correlation is not causation)
Social Metrics
Keyword Usage
http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

66. Promotion in Search Results
Neil
wins
here
https://www.google.com/#q=SEO

67. Enhanced SERPs
Reviews
Authorship

68. Enhanced SERPs
Does it Work?
Authorship
http://research.google.com/pubs/pub41199.html

69. Cards Everywhere
Personalization + Structured Data
Research
News
Real Estate

70. If Seznam
used structured
data instead of
screenshots,
we might not
see blanks
http://www.seznam.sk/

71. When in Doubt, Use Open Graph
and Schema.org
http://moz.com/blog/meta-data-templates-123

72. 5. Mobile First

73. Look Where Google is Going
Moving Mobile Design to Desktop
Mobile
Desktop
http://moz.com/blog/future-serp-a-glimpse-at-google-2014

74. We’ve Seen This Before
Cards Everywhere
Mobile
Desktop
http://moz.com/blog/future-serp-a-glimpse-at-google-2014

75. Easier to Expand Design than Contract
Mobile
Desktop
http://www.samovidic.com/

76. Desktop Design Becomes an Extension of
Mobile
http://www.prometheusreg.com/

77. When we get
here….
…people will
ask…
“Do we need a
desktop site?”
http://www.biakelsey.com/

78. 6. From Pageviews to Satisfaction

79. Web Analytics 1990

80. First Touch - Middle - Last Touch
Web
Analytics
2013

81. Do Visitors Like My Site?
Instead of Just Visiting
Measure:
• Bounce Rate
• Time on Site
• Pages per Visit
• Share Rate
• Mention Rate
http://moz.com/blog/seo-satisfaction

82. Obsess Over Speed
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/technology/impatient-web-users-flee-slow-loading-sites.html

83. Track Offsite Mentions
Important
Mentions of “Marketing
Festival”
http://freshwebexplorer.moz.com/

84. Together, we got this!

85. @cyrusshepard