Modern SEO: What You Need to Compete in 2018

What You Need to Compete in 2018
MODERN SEO
Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing

Modern SEO
utilizes a building
block approach
to ranking in
search.
Copyright Web Savvy Marketing, All Rights Reserved

SEO TRENDS AND CHANGES
o Mobile and responsive websites
o SSL and HTTPS based websites
o AMP usage
o The Google Knowledge Graph
o Voice search
o Increased usage of topic based search and less emphasis on exact
match phrases
o Increased focus on the user experience
o The looming presence of mobile first indexing

WHAT IS SEMATIC SEARCH?
Semantic search is defined as search for information based on the
intent of the searcher and contextual meaning of the search terms.
Instead of looking at just the term itself, Google attempts to interpret
the user intent within the search and match this phrase to results
based on content, trends, and prior activity.
What this really means: Google just got a whole lot smarter!

WHAT IS SEMATIC SEARCH?
o Semantic search isn’t new, but many people don’t understand it or
it’s importance.
o Understanding how it applies to search is critical for today’s SEO.
o Semantic search seeks to improve search accuracy by
understanding a searcher’s intent and how this intent relates to the
world around it.
o Semantic search is not about synonyms alone. Google is much
smarter than that and search results are much more rich.
o Semantic search brings forth a vastly improved understanding of
both the searcher’s intent and the content used in results.

SEMANTIC SEARCH FACTORS
o Current trends (recent movie launch)
o Location of search
o Search intent (hot dog to eat vs. hot dog that needs shade)
o Word variations (singular, plural)
o Synonyms (small, tiny, minor, miniature)
o Generalized and specialized (MGM Grand and accommodations)
o Word groupings
o Related words

CONFUSED GOOGLE
o One word search
o Google cannot gather
user intent
o Results are mixed
between a person,
food, and a dictionary
result

SEMANTIC SEARCH: SMART GOOGLE
ß Words like “taste” help
Google understand this is
about food.
The word “cheapest” helps
Google understand this is
about computers. à

BACK TO CONFUSED
o Two word search
o Most results are for the
food
o Although the product
dominates the page
o Not a great search
phrase for the user or
the marketers writing
matching content

o You don’t need – or want – to create individual pages for each
variation of a keyword phrase.
o Write and optimize content with keyword variations in mind.
o Augment your content for related phrases to help Google better
understand intent and context:
o Food: taste, color, freshness
o Computer: cost, support, features, monitor, keyboard
o Company: founders, stock prices, headquarters, store locations
SEMANTIC SEARCH TAKEAWAYS

o Think long and hard about possible keywords.
o Think more about long-tail search phrases and less about one
word searches.
o Review Google search results for possible keyword phrases so you
can see how Google interprets the user intent of a given phrase.
o Write for the human reader. Consider search engines, but
remember the human reader is driving the need for semantic
search.
SEMANTIC SEARCH TAKEAWAYS

WHAT IS THE KNOWLEDGE GRAPH?
o First introduced in 2012.
o Since the release, it has diversified in data presented and greatly
expanded in usage.
o The Knowledge Graph is simply a huge collection of the people,
places, and things.
o What’s important is that Google uses the Knowledge Graph to
understand how those people, places, and things are connected
to one another.
o Google then uses this technology to quickly provide the best
possible answer to a user’s question.

KNOWLEDGE GRAPH EXAMPLES
o Companies – like “Home Depot”
o People – like “Nobel prize winners” or “Frank Lloyd Wright”
o Sports teams – like the “Chicago Bulls”
o Art – like the “Mona Lisa”
o Buildings – like the “Eiffel Tower”
o Movies – location and times
o Recipes – like “baked salmon”
o Music – like “country music”
o Images – like “cute cats”

KNOWLEDGE GRAPH USAGE
A recent study of 1.4 million queries,
shows that 50 percent or more of users’
queries included a form of Knowledge
Graph data:
o Featured snippets
o Rich answers
o Direct answers
o Or something similar

KNOWLEDGE PANEL
o Introduced in 2012
o Also called Knowledge Cards
o Two main types: Brand and Local
o The data will look different between desktop and mobile
o There are four main sources of information:
o You: Information you’ve added on Google My Business
o Your Website
o Users: Information from people who use Google services
o Third-party Sources: Information from other places online

BRANDEXAMPLE
LOCALEXAMPLE

KNOWLEDGE BOX (ANSWER BOX)
o Provides simple data as an answer
o Does not provide a link to a
specific website
o Stone Temple Consulting’s graph
shows significant year to year
growth in usage
o Not really possible to manipulate
or control these results

KNOWLEDGE BOX EXAMPLES

FEATURED SNIPPETS
o Known as position zero
o Appears above organic results
o Links to website or source data
o About 30% of search results
o Tend to use long-tail keywords
o Does not require special coding
o Does require great content
o Constantly changing results

RANKING FOR FEATURED SNIPPETS
o Write high quality, long form content
o Have a paragraph description to summarize content that is 40-50
words long
o Consider questions like what, why, how and write content to
answer those questions
o Write for humans and remember sematic search
o Consider using lists and tables
o Organize your content with correct headers (H1, H2, H3) so it’s
easy for search engines to follow

RICH CARDS
o Introduced in 2016, but didn’t
roll out to worldwide users until
2017
o Supports content preview in
search results
o Links to website content
o Site owners can influence what
content appears in Rich Cards
o Requires Structured Data and
correct markup

o The real estate for page one ranking just got a lot smaller if you are
relying on old school SEO tactics.
o The real estate for page one ranking just got a lot bigger if you are
taking advantage of modern SEO tactics.
o You can’t just write content and expect you’ll rank.
o You have to understand how your website and content interacts
with the world around you.
o Ranking in organic search requires a blend of on-page SEO, off-
page SEO, and a solid understanding of technical SEO.
KNOWLEDGE GRAPH TAKEAWAYS

WHAT IS SCHEMA?
o Schema.org is a collaborative, community activity with a mission
to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on
the Internet, on web pages, in email messages, and beyond.
o Schema.org provides a collection of shared “vocabularies”
webmasters can use to mark up their pages in ways that can be
understood by the major search engines: Google, Microsoft,
Yandex and Yahoo!
o Over 10 million sites use Schema.org to markup their web pages
and email messages.

SCHEMA VOCABULARIES
o Vocabularies are the heart of schema.
o Vocabularies cover entities and relationships between entities
and actions.
o Schema.org vocabulary is segmented into two hierarchies:
o Data – Boolean, date, number, text, time, etc.
o Things – Review, events, podcast, recipe, book, music, comment,
and actions.
o The core schema vocabulary currently consists of:
o 597 Types
o 867 Properties
o 114 Enumeration values

WHAT IS STRUCTURED DATA?
o Structured Data helps search engines see content like a human
o Structured Data is not required for all Knowledge Panel results
o Google does not guarantee that your structured data will show
up in search results
o If you are using WordPress, there are many plugins that can help
create structured data for you and your website
o You must include all the required properties for an object to be
eligible for appearance in Google search with enhanced display
o Google’s supported mark up includes JSON-LD, microdata, and
RDFa

WITHOUT STRUCTURED DATA IN PLACE
Google Bot:
”Nice websites, but I don’t
understand much about
them or their content.”

WITH STRUCTURED DATA IN PLACE
Google Bot:
”I totally understand this
content and I’ll rank this
website well in search.”
Place >
Hotel Room
Place >
LocalBusiness >
FoodEstablishment >
BarOrPub
Event >
TheaterEvent

STRUCTURED DATA IN USE
Place >
LocalBusiness >
FoodEstablishment >
BarOrPub

o Again – you can’t just write content and expect it to rank in organic
search.
o You have to understand modern SEO techniques like structured
data and know if/how this relates to your site and content.
o If you compete against websites using structured data, then you’re
going to have to dig in and become one with schema.
o Yet you must be careful. What you don’t know can and will hurt you
with Google. Poorly implemented schema will cause problems and
it will bring forth stern warnings from Googe.
SCHEMA TAKEAWAYS

WHAT IS VOICE SEARCH?
o Voice search is driven by digital
assistants like Siri, Cortana, Google
Now, Alexa, and Google Assistant
o In 2016, Google stated voice search
was already 20% of searches
o 40% of adults now use voice search
once per day according to Location
World
o Comscore estimates that 50% of all
searches will be voice searches by
2020

RANKING FOR VOICE SEARCH
o Voice Search answers questions
o Voice search uses long-tail keywords phrases
o Voice search is conversational and uses Semantic Search
o Voice search users data sources the Knowledge Panel, Featured
Snippets, or Google My Business profiles
o Voice search also uses Structured Data and Schema
o Because voice search is often on mobile, websites have to be
mobile ready and load quickly

o Again – you can’t just write content and expect it to rank in organic
search. You know this now right?
o Focus on the human visitor and write content that is presented in a
conversational manner.
o Keep Semantic Search in mind when you look for keywords and
when you write content.
o Get your whole house in order and make sure you have solid SEO
on-page, off-page, and inside your code.
VOICE SEARCH TAKEAWAYS

WHAT IS MOBILE FIRST INDEXING?
o Simply means that the
mobile version of your
website will become the
starting point for what
Google will include in the
index and use for
displaying in search results.
o If no mobile site exists,
Google will use the
desktop version.
MOZ illustration

PREPARING FOR MOBILE FIRST INDEXING
o Make sure you have a mobile responsive website, which is
Google’s preferred route.
o If you are using mobile responsive design, don’t hide data on
mobile.
o If you are using a completely separate mobile site:
o Make sure the content on the mobile website matches the content
on the desktop version
o Make sure Structured Data matches between websites
o Make sure meta matches between sites
o Verify both versions and upload both XML sitemaps in Google Search
Console

o If you have a well coded, responsive website then you should be
good to go. This change should not hurt you or your ranking.
o If only have an outdated website that is desktop only, you need to
upgrade your website to a mobile responsive code structure.
o If you have separate websites for mobile and desktop, you need to
make sure your mobile website has the content you want indexed
and it includes enough content to make you relevant in search.
o Don’t fear Google – not every change means the sky is falling.
MOBILE FIRST INDEXING TAKEAWAYS

WHAT IS AMP?
o AMP is short for Accelerated
Mobile Pages
o AMP is a Google project that is
designed to help pages load
instantly on mobile
o AMP strips out “unnecessary”
elements that would otherwise
weigh down the page
o “Unnecessary” is a relative term
when talking about AMP usage
o AMP isn’t for every website

USING AMP
o While configuring AMP was a scary
endeavor when originally
launched, it is not as intimidating
today thanks to WordPress plugins.
o These two plugins will do the
majority of the work for
implementing AMP on WordPress
websites.
o The question isn’t if you can
implement AMP, it really is do you
want and need to do so?

o Educate yourself about AMP before jumping in and/or updating
your website or blog.
o Only implement AMP if it will actually help your website ranking and
human visitors.
o When implementing AMP, make sure you do so on a staging
website so you can see what is removed and what stays.
o Don’t always jump on the latest SEO changes – sometimes you
have to ride them out to see if they are necessary.
AMP TAKEAWAYS

OLD TECHNICAL SEO
o Crawling and indexing
o H1 headers
o Meta titles and descriptions
o SEO friendly URLs
o Robot.txt files
o XML sitemaps
o Duplicate content
o Code bloat
o Speed and performance

TODAY’S TECHNICAL SEO
o Crawling and indexing
o H1 headers
o Meta titles and descriptions
o SEO friendly URLs
o Robot.txt files
o XML sitemaps
o Duplicate content
o Code bloat
o Speed and performance
o Content silos
o All subheader usage
o Image optimization
o Accessibility
o Thin content
o Breadcrumbs
o Archive access
o Internal linking
o 301 redirections

TODAY’S TECHNICAL SEO…STILL GOING
o Content length
o Structured data
o Social graph usage
o Usability
o Code validation
o Cross browser testing
o Broken internal links
o Broken external links
o Nofollow usage
o Noindex usage
o Mobile responsiveness
o 404 errors
o Broken images
o SSL certificates
o HTTPS usage/issues
o AMP usage
o Hreflang usage/issues
o Redirect loops

TODAY’S TECHNICAL SEO…STILL GOING
o Canonicalization
o Frame usage
o Flash usage
o URL length
o Orphaned pages
o Doc types
o Anchor text
o Tabs and accordions
o JavaScript usage
o Security
o Mobile only websites
o Crawl rates and budgets
o Tag Manager usage
o Faceted navigation
o Broken backlinks
o Malware

WHAT TECHNICAL SEO MEANS TO YOU
Technical SEO has shifted a lot in the last few years and it now
reaches into the entire website design and development lifecycle:
o Graphic design
o Content planning
o Architecture build out
o Hosting selection
o Theme coding
o Data migration
o Go-live audits
o Post-live audits
o On-going maintenance
o Annual health checks

o SEO is becoming more and more complex.
o SEO isn’t a one-time event.
o SEO isn’t something you can pass onto the intern and hope for the
best.
o Everyone needs to have a basic understanding of what technical
SEO is and how it alters the website development process.
o Developers need to truly understand what technical SEO is and
how it alters their work before, during, and after launch.
o Marketers need to understand the basics of technical SEO and only
outsource work to those who also understand it.
TECHNICAL SEO TAKEAWAYS

MODERN SEO IS HOLISTIC
Page
One
Rank
Research
Strategy &
Planning
Keyword
Mapping
High Quality
Content
On-Page
Optimization
Off-Page
Optimization
Technical SEO
Reporting
SEO is an ongoing journey.
SEO spans the entire
lifecycle of a website or
blog.
SEO requires an
organizational/team
approach.
SEO can no longer belong
to marketing alone.

Twitter: @RebeccaGill
Join me for a three day Technical SEO summit in March!
This event is designed specifically for WordPress developers, implementers, and agencies.
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Register: diyseocourses.com/tech-seo/
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Modern SEO: What You Need to Compete in 2018

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