We rely pretty heavily on Google, but some of their decisions of late have made doing SEO more difficult than it used to be. Which organic opportunities have been taken away, and what are some potential solutions? Rand covers a rather unsettling trend for SEO in this week"s Whiteboard Friday.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we"re talking about something kind of unnerving. What do we, as SEOs, do as Google is removing organic search traffic?
So for the last 19 years or 20 years that Google has been around, every month Google has had, at least seasonally adjusted, not just more searches, but they"ve sent more organic traffic than they did that month last year. So this has been on a steady incline. There"s always been more opportunity in Google search until recently, and that is because of a bunch of moves, not that Google is losing market share, not that they"re receiving fewer searches, but that they are doing things that makes SEO a lot harder.
Some scary news
Things like...
Aggressive "answer" boxes. So you search for a question, and Google provides not just necessarily a featured snippet, which can earn you a click-through, but a box that truly answers the searcher"s question, that comes directly from Google themselves, or a set of card-style results that provides a list of all the things that the person might be looking for.
Google is moving into more and more aggressively commercial spaces, like jobs, flights, products, all of these kinds of searches where previously there was opportunity and now there"s a lot less. If you"re Expedia or you"re Travelocity or you"re Hotels.com or you"re Cheapflights and you see what"s going on with flight and hotel searches in particular, Google is essentially saying, "No, no, no. Don"t worry about clicking anything else. We"ve got the answers for you right here."
We also saw for the first time a seasonally adjusted drop, a drop in total organic clicks sent. That was between August and November of 2017. It was thanks to the Jumpshot dataset. It happened at least here in the United States. We don"t know if it"s happened in other countries as well. But that"s certainly concerning because that is not something we"ve observed in the past. There were fewer clicks sent than there were previously. That makes us pretty concerned. It didn"t go down very much. It went down a couple of percentage points. There"s still a lot more clicks being sent in 2018 than there were in 2013. So it"s not like we"ve dipped below something, but concerning.
New zero-result SERPs. We absolutely saw those for the first time. Google rolled them back after rolling them out. But, for example, if you search for the time in London or a Lagavulin 16, Google was showing no results at all, just a little box with the time and then potentially some AdWords ads. So zero organic results, nothing for an SEO to even optimize for in there.
Local SERPs that remove almost all need for a website. Then local SERPs, which have been getting more and more aggressively tuned so that you never need to click the website, and, in fact, Google has made it harder and harder to find the website in both mobile and desktop versions of local searches. So if you search for Thai restaurant and you try and find the website of the Thai restaurant you"re interested in, as opposed to just information about them in Google"s local pack, that"s frustratingly difficult. They are making those more and more aggressive and putting them more forward in the results.
Potential solutions for marketers
So, as a result, I think search marketers really need to start thinking about: What do we do as Google is taking away this opportunity? How can we continue to compete and provide value for our clients and our companies? I think there are three big sort of paths — I won"t get into the details of the paths — but three big paths that we can pursue.
1. Invest in demand generation for your brand + branded product names to leapfrog declines in unbranded search.
The first one is pretty powerful and pretty awesome, which is investing in demand generation, rather than just demand serving, but demand generation for brand and branded product names. Why does this work? Well, because let"s say, for example, I"m searching for SEO tools. What do I get? I get back a list of results from Google with a bunch of mostly articles saying these are the top SEO tools. In fact, Google has now made a little one box, card-style list result up at the top, the carousel that shows different brands of SEO tools. I don"t think Moz is actually listed in there because I think they"re pulling from the second or the third lists instead of the first one. Whatever the case, frustrating, hard to optimize for. Google could take away demand from it or click-through rate opportunity from it.
But if someone performs a search for Moz, well, guess what? I mean we can nail that sucker. We can definitely rank for that. Google is not going to take away our ability to rank for our own brand name. In fact, Google knows that, in the navigational search sense, they need to provide the website that the person is looking for front and center. So if we can create more demand for Moz than there is for SEO tools, which I think there"s something like 5 or 10 times more demand already for Moz than there is tools, according to Google Trends, that"s a great way to go. You can do the same thing through your content, through your social media, and through your email marketing. Even through search you can search and create demand for your brand rather than unbranded terms.
2. Optimize for additional platforms.
Second thing, optimizing across additional platforms. So we"ve looked and YouTube and Google Images account for about half of the overall volume that goes to Google web search. So between these two platforms, you"ve got a significant amount of additional traffic that you can optimize for. Images has actually gotten less aggressive. Right now they"ve taken away the "view image directly" link so that more people are visiting websites via Google Images. YouTube, obviously, this is a great place to build brand affinity, to build awareness, to create demand, this kind of demand generation to get your content in front of people. So these two are great platforms for that.
There are also significant amounts of web traffic still on the social web — LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc., etc. The list goes on. Those are places where you can optimize, put your content forward, and earn traffic back to your websites.
3. Optimize the content that Google does show.
Local
So if you"re in the local space and you"re saying, "Gosh, Google has really taken away the ability for my website to get the clicks that it used to get from Google local searches," going into Google My Business and optimizing to provide information such that people who perform that query will be satisfied by Google"s result, yes, they won"t get to your website, but they will still come to your business, because you"ve optimized the content such that Google is showing, through Google My Business, such that those searchers want to engage with you. I think this sometimes gets lost in the SEO battle. We"re trying so hard to earn the click to our site that we"re forgetting that a lot of search experience ends right at the SERP itself, and we can optimize there too.
Results
In the zero-results sets, Google was still willing to show AdWords, which means if we have customer targets, we can use remarketed lists for search advertising (RLSA), or we can run paid ads and still optimize for those. We could also try and claim some of the data that might show up in zero-result SERPs. We don"t yet know what that will be after Google rolls it back out, but we"ll find out in the future.
Answers
For answers, the answers that Google is giving, whether that"s through voice or visually, those can be curated and crafted through featured snippets, through the card lists, and through the answer boxes. We have the opportunity again to influence, if not control, what Google is showing in those places, even when the search ends at the SERP.
All right, everyone, thanks for watching for this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We"ll see you again next week. Take care.
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It takes time to create great content: you brainstorm, research, design and redesign, brand, edit, and optimize. After a brief flurry of traffic from your distribution channels, there’s a problem: your content goes quiet. As soon as you stop actively promoting it, people stop finding it.
It’s exhausting and the results are erratic when you depend on short spikes of traffic to drive your content strategy. On the other hand, if you have just one piece of content that ranks well in organic search, over time it delivers 10x more value than the rest of your content marketing plan combined.
You already create great content, you just need your customers to see it. This workflow can help:
6-Step Content Strategy Workflow
Research topics:Identify the trends and topics that are in demand.
Analyze type: Know what content format will resonate best.
Map content: Target buyer personas along the customer journey.
Optimize: Improve the content you have to maximize ROI.
Step 1: Identify the trends and topics that your customers are searching for so you create content that’s in demand
Come up with an initial list of topics with your team, and then use a keyword research tool to decide which topics will resonate best with your audience. Look at:
Search volume – Find high search volume terms that are relevant to your topics. Select a cluster of related terms for each individual topic.
Search intent – Determine whether searchers are looking for early (educational), mid (exploring solutions), or late stage (transactional) content along the customer journey.
Competition – High page authority results in the top positions and stagnant results (they don’t change much week to week) indicate difficulty.
Tip: Which keyword would you choose — term A with 10,000 MSV or term B with 1,000 MSV? Term A, right? Not so fast! A Keyword Research Tool can help you think in terms of clusters: you might find there are 100 related terms for B and only 5 related terms for A. So the math means the potential reach for A: 10×5=50,000 MSV. The potential reach for B: 1×100=100,000 MSV) If you are looking for volume, B is the better choice.
Content Strategy Spotlight: JanSport
“We used to call one of our products a “digital bag” in our content.Our keyword research showed us that consumers didn’t know what a “digital bag” was or think about our products that way.
The fact is: you can have an amazing product that people love, but if no one can find it online, you won’t drive interest or traffic.” –Victoria Reuter, JanSport [read full story]
Step 2:Know what type of content — like videos, articles, or images – will resonate most with your audience
Now that you have your topics, decide what format your content should take. Search for the terms you found in step one, and look at the content formats that appear on the search engine results pages (SERPS) for your topics. You’ll see formats like:
Manually search, or use your content and SEO platform to see how those formats vary across search locations and devices.
Go ahead and click through on the top ranking results to get a better understanding of your competitors’ content and page structure. (Model your content after the top rankers but do it better.)
Content Strategy Spotlight: Birchbox
“Our Beauty Essentials series takes a simple, educational approach, teaching basic beauty skills. The products are secondary. The topics are SEO-friendly, so organic search has been a huge driver. It consistently gets great engagement and great sentiment.” -Lorelei Orfeo, Birchbox [Read full story]
Step 3: Create the right content for the right customer at the right stage of the customer journey
It’s time to think about how the content you’re creating will fit into your overall content strategy. Content mapping will help you accomplish two things:
Complement the assets you have. Fill gaps instead of creating redundant content.
Get qualified traffic, not just any traffic. Map your content to the right customer when they’re looking for it.
Categorize your content by buyer’s persona and customer journey stage. Tackle your whole site or just take on a section, campaign, or product. If you don’t have content mapping technology, use an excel sheet to track your urls.
When you have created a content map, you’ll be able to see cracks in your content strategy. Look for opportunities to create content where you’re not visible, or optimize content that’s visible but not converting.
Content Strategy Spotlight: Sealed Air
“As the world gets more sophisticated, we need to produce the right content for the right person at the right time. And Searchlight’s Content Mapping feature allows us to map out our buyer personas and journeys. With it, we see content and keyword gaps.” –Ben Pollack, Sealed Air [read full story]
Step 4: Optimize the content you have to maximize ROI
As content marketers, we can get swept up in the frenzy of creating new content and rarely revisit what’s already on our site. But improving the assets you have is critical – you can get big payoffs for a small amount of work.
You have access to change a few things in your source code, like title tags, meta description, H1 tags, and body content.
Titles and Meta Descriptions help convey to Google what your page is about, and also help entice searchers (who see your result snippet) to click on you.
Add keywords and details to your calls-to-action (“Red Cars” vs “Red Convertible Cars”) or Meta Descriptions (“We have the best red cars.” vs “We have the best red cars and have $ 0 APR for 24 months”)
You can also optimize your image titles, alt tags, url, and body copy with keywords.
Ultimately, optimizations are an experiment. There’s no one right way. Here are some experiments you may want to try to increase your conversions and rankings:
Freshen and improve the quality of that content to better fit buyer personas and customer journey stage (look at user intent)
Break up large pieces of content into focused, small pieces
Combine small pieces into a larger piece, redirecting existing posts to strengthen the authority of a single page
Improve your internal linking structure to add authority – have high-authority pages point links to the page you want to rank
Implement A/B testing and change up page elements like colors, fonts, images, and CTAs to see what converts best
Conduct social and link campaigns to get external signals to bolster the authority of existing pages
As you make changes, keep a record of what changes you’ve made for each page, and when (the easiest way to do this is to add and automate annotations in your content software).
Content Strategy Spotlight: Republic Wireless“I wanted to optimize our wifi calling page, which is an extremely high competition search term. I expanded our page with related keywords and optimized the metadata. After we focused on optimizing that page, we’ve seen 108% more traffic, 100% more revenue, and 22% longer session duration.” –Cody Gault, Republic Wireless [read full story]
Step 5: Segment, compare, and measure your content to see how well you’re performing
Configure your tracking technology (analytics or SEO platform) so you can quickly understand your content wins and losses.
Set up segments, groupings of pages, on meaningful parts of your business. Segment examples:
“Setting up page segments and categories is time well spent. They highlight the problems and the victories we’re achieving with our content strategy. Every Monday, I look for big drops and gains in our segments and categories. I use that information to plan out high-impact activities like content creation and optimization.” -Matthew Rogers, Madison Reed
Step 6: Create reports to share your success
Reports do two important things. They enable you to continuously improve your strategy and to communicate the impact you’ve had on your business to other parts of your organization. Reports can help you get more resources by showing the potential money and market share that’s on the table.
Think of reports in terms of questions you want to answer for your site:
Are we succeeding in creating or improving content that is visible for target keywords?
Are we hitting our targets for rank positions and traffic for those pages?
How is a particular new piece of content doing? Is it bringing in new organic traffic? How is it ranking for the keywords we are tracking?
Which of our writers brings in the most organic traffic? (Create segments based on writers to see these trends.)
What are our top 10 highest visited pages by organic, and overall?
Which keywords do our competitors rank for where we don’t?
How does our overall organic market share compare to our competitors?
Have we gained or dropped visibility or conversions for important pieces of content? (Pay special attention to movement to or from the first page of search engine, where the vast majority of clicks occur.)
If we had more resources to target more content opportunities, what ROI could we achieve?
Content Strategy Spotlight: Seer
“Our workspaces (reports) cover a range of target areas for our clients, like search competition, content strategy analysis, and keyword research. They help inform decisions, create content for clients, encourage quicker arch updates and give us an idea of the competitive landscape.” –Wil Reynolds, Seer [read full story]
The Content Strategy Workflow Golden Rule: Know What’s in Demand
If you take nothing else from this workflow, remember this: you will be more successful if you assess customer demand before you create content.
Second, don’t focus solely on creation. Spend time improving content you have – you’ll ultimately drive more value if you are resourceful with the content that’s already available to you.
Finally, carefully configure and measure your site, making sure you can understand the value of your work, and share it with others.
What’s your content marketing plan for organic search? How do you get your content visible online?
Want to see how you stack up against other content marketers? Download both B2B and B2C e-books and dig deeper into how content marketers strategize.
While many marketing and sales teams have adopted new methodologies like the SiriusDecisions Demand Unit Waterfall, very often those teams’ marketing and sales technologies haven’t kept up. With thousands of MarTech companies vying for your attention, it can be tough … read more »
I get asked these questions a lot. And my mission with ProBlogger is to address them.
Let me start by answering the first question. There is no secret to successful blogging, and no magic formula for a successful blog.
But there are some common things many successful bloggers share—decisions, behaviors, disciplines and habits—that take them closer to a profitable blog.
It’s the accumulation of the basic little things you do every day that makes you a successful blogger. Small but consistent actions such as creating and publishing new content, responding to comments and interacting with your audience are more important than almost anything else in building a sustainable blogging business.
Habit forming was the big thing I noticed that really escalated the growth of a blog. Setting up routines, getting into the flow of all the different blogging activities and being disciplined about taking action is the not-so-secret to building a successful blog and making money from it.
So how do you do this? What do you do first? What if you’ve tried and failed?
31 Days to Build a Better Blog was created to answer these questions, and provide the solution of what to do.
When I first came up with the idea for a 31-day blog post series back in 2006, I"d noticed that the things that really improved a blog, and the things I observed other full-time bloggers doing, was taking small consistent actions over time.
From a blog post series to an eBook and now a course, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog has certainly evolved. And in doing so it has helped tens of thousands of bloggers.
While a lot of people come looking for the secrets of making money blogging at ProBlogger, what I learned in the early days of ProBlogger was that what seemed to help bloggers the most was challenging them to take action rather than just gain knowledge.
What’s in the Course?
31 Days to Build a Better Blog is designed to make you think, but more importantly DO. The course is divided into 31 easy-to-follow tasks you can work through in your own time. Each step in the course contains:
Teaching - You’ll be given in-depth video instruction on both the WHY and HOW of the task of the day.
A Task - You"ll also be given something to DO in that step so you make actual progress using worksheets, printouts and step-by-step guides.
Further resources and reading - Finally, you"ll be equipped with the tools to help you dive deeper on any task.
We"ve designed this three-pronged approach so you come away from the challenge having not only learned how to build a better blog but also achieved something with the knowledge. By the end of the 31 days I want you to have taken 31 actions.
In fact, by the end of the 31-step course, you’ll have:
Set objectives and goals for your blog
Identified and really understood your audience
Learned techniques for coming up with new post ideas
Promoted your blog in a variety of ways and found new readers
Deepened reader engagement with current readers
Developed an editorial calendar for your blog
Discovered ways to be more connected to your niche/topic
Designed a plan for the next month of your blogging
Explored opportunities for monetizing your blog
Clarified your next steps on the path to a blogging business
Can This Course Help Me?
If you"ve just started your blog and figured out all those first steps of getting your first few posts published you"re probably thinking, "Now what?" This course will give you direction in building successful foundations for a profitable blogging business.
Or maybe you"ve been blogging for a while and have lost your way or your "blogging mojo". Consider this course a "lifesaver" for your blog, with a month of actionable prompts to kickstart your blog again and get it on the right path to becoming a profitable business.
Special Offer For You to Take the Course
As a ProBlogger reader, we’d like to extend an invitation for you to take the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Course at a discounted ‘launch offer’ rate. Instead of the usual price of $ 99 you can buy it now until 30th June 2018 for $ 49, which is less than half price.
A Structured Facebook Group for Progress and Accountability
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I"d love to hear your stories, case studies and more after doing the course. Make sure you submit your testimonial so we can contact you about your better blog story and share it with the ProBlogger community.
Google is testing a new large product based knowledge panel in their search results. This new style is a cross between a product knowledge panel and a Product Listing Ad, something they first began testing several years ago, with a combination of both paid and organic search features included. Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz spotted […]
If your work involves SEO at some level, you’ve most likely been hearing more and more about JavaScript and the implications it has on crawling and indexing. Frankly, Googlebot struggles with it, and many websites utilize modern-day JavaScript to load in crucial content today. Because of this, we need to be equipped to discuss this topic when it comes up in order to be effective.
The goal of this post is to equip you with the minimum viable knowledge required to do so. This post won’t go into the nitty gritty details, describe the history, or give you extreme detail on specifics. There are a lot of incredible write-ups that already do this — I suggest giving them a read if you are interested in diving deeper (I’ll link out to my favorites at the bottom).
In order to be effective consultants when it comes to the topic of JavaScript and SEO, we need to be able to answer three questions:
Does the domain/page in question rely on client-side JavaScript to load/change on-page content or links?
If yes, is Googlebot seeing the content that’s loaded in via JavaScript properly?
If not, what is the ideal solution?
With some quick searching, I was able to find three examples of landing pages that utilize JavaScript to load in crucial content.
I’m going to be using Sitecore’s Symposium landing page through each of these talking points to illustrate how to answer the questions above.
We’ll cover the “how do I do this” aspect first, and at the end I’ll expand on a few core concepts and link to further resources.
Question 1: Does the domain in question rely on client-side JavaScript to load/change on-page content or links?
The first step to diagnosing any issues involving JavaScript is to check if the domain uses it to load in crucial content that could impact SEO (on-page content or links). Ideally this will happen anytime you get a new client (during the initial technical audit), or whenever your client redesigns/launches new features of the site.
How do we go about doing this?
Ask the client
Ask, and you shall receive! Seriously though, one of the quickest/easiest things you can do as a consultant is contact your POC (or developers on the account) and ask them. After all, these are the people who work on the website day-in and day-out!
“Hi [client], we’re currently doing a technical sweep on the site. One thing we check is if any crucial content (links, on-page content) gets loaded in via JavaScript. We will do some manual testing, but an easy way to confirm this is to ask! Could you (or the team) answer the following, please?
1. Are we using client-side JavaScript to load in important content? 2. If yes, can we get a bulleted list of where/what content is loaded in via JavaScript?”
Check manually
Even on a large e-commerce website with millions of pages, there are usually only a handful of important page templates. In my experience, it should only take an hour max to check manually. I use the Chrome Web Developers plugin, disable JavaScript from there, and manually check the important templates of the site (homepage, category page, product page, blog post, etc.)
In the example above, once we turn off JavaScript and reload the page, we can see that we are looking at a blank page.
As you make progress, jot down notes about content that isn’t being loaded in, is being loaded in wrong, or any internal linking that isn’t working properly.
At the end of this step we should know if the domain in question relies on JavaScript to load/change on-page content or links. If the answer is yes, we should also know where this happens (homepage, category pages, specific modules, etc.)
Crawl
You could also crawl the site (with a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb) with JavaScript rendering turned off, and then run the same crawl with JavaScript turned on, and compare the differences with internal links and on-page elements.
For example, it could be that when you crawl the site with JavaScript rendering turned off, the title tags don’t appear. In my mind this would trigger an action to crawl the site with JavaScript rendering turned on to see if the title tags do appear (as well as checking manually).
Example
For our example, I went ahead and did a manual check. As we can see from the screenshot below, when we disable JavaScript, the content does not load.
In other words, the answer to our first question for this pages is “yes, JavaScript is being used to load in crucial parts of the site.”
Question 2: If yes, is Googlebot seeing the content that’s loaded in via JavaScript properly?
If your client is relying on JavaScript on certain parts of their website (in our example they are), it is our job to try and replicate how Google is actually seeing the page(s). We want to answer the question, “Is Google seeing the page/site the way we want it to?”
In order to get a more accurate depiction of what Googlebot is seeing, we need to attempt to mimic how it crawls the page.
How do we do that?
Use Google’s new mobile-friendly testing tool
At the moment, the quickest and most accurate way to try and replicate what Googlebot is seeing on a site is by using Google’s new mobile friendliness tool. My colleague Dom recently wrote an in-depth post comparing Search Console Fetch and Render, Googlebot, and the mobile friendliness tool. His findings were that most of the time, Googlebot and the mobile friendliness tool resulted in the same output.
In Google’s mobile friendliness tool, simply input your URL, hit “run test,” and then once the test is complete, click on “source code” on the right side of the window. You can take that code and search for any on-page content (title tags, canonicals, etc.) or links. If they appear here, Google is most likely seeing the content.
Search for visible content in Google
It’s always good to sense-check. Another quick way to check if GoogleBot has indexed content on your page is by simply selecting visible text on your page, and doing a site:search for it in Google with quotations around said text.
In our example there is visible text on the page that reads…
"Whether you are in marketing, business development, or IT, you feel a sense of urgency. Or maybe opportunity?"
When we do a site:search for this exact phrase, for this exact page, we get nothing. This means Google hasn’t indexed the content.
Crawling with a tool
Most crawling tools have the functionality to crawl JavaScript now. For example, in Screaming Frog you can head to configuration > spider > rendering > then select “JavaScript” from the dropdown and hit save. DeepCrawl and SiteBulb both have this feature as well.
From here you can input your domain/URL and see the rendered page/code once your tool of choice has completed the crawl.
Example:
When attempting to answer this question, my preference is to start by inputting the domain into Google’s mobile friendliness tool, copy the source code, and searching for important on-page elements (think title tag, <h1>, body copy, etc.) It’s also helpful to use a tool like diff checker to compare the rendered HTML with the original HTML (Screaming Frog also has a function where you can do this side by side).
For our example, here is what the output of the mobile friendliness tool shows us.
After a few searches, it becomes clear that important on-page elements are missing here.
We also did the second test and confirmed that Google hasn’t indexed the body content found on this page.
The implication at this point is that Googlebot is not seeing our content the way we want it to, which is a problem.
Let’s jump ahead and see what we can recommend the client.
Question 3: If we’re confident Googlebot isn’t seeing our content properly, what should we recommend?
Now we know that the domain is using JavaScript to load in crucial content and we know that Googlebot is most likely not seeing that content, the final step is to recommend an ideal solution to the client. Key word: recommend, not implement. It’s 100% our job to flag the issue to our client, explain why it’s important (as well as the possible implications), and highlight an ideal solution. It is 100% not our job to try to do the developer’s job of figuring out an ideal solution with their unique stack/resources/etc.
How do we do that?
You want server-side rendering
The main reason why Google is having trouble seeing Sitecore’s landing page right now, is because Sitecore’s landing page is asking the user (us, Googlebot) to do the heavy work of loading the JavaScript on their page. In other words, they’re using client-side JavaScript.
Googlebot is literally landing on the page, trying to execute JavaScript as best as possible, and then needing to leave before it has a chance to see any content.
The fix here is to instead have Sitecore’s landing page load on their server. In other words, we want to take the heavy lifting off of Googlebot, and put it on Sitecore’s servers. This will ensure that when Googlebot comes to the page, it doesn’t have to do any heavy lifting and instead can crawl the rendered HTML.
In this scenario, Googlebot lands on the page and already sees the HTML (and all the content).
There are more specific options (like isomorphic setups)
This is where it gets to be a bit in the weeds, but there are hybrid solutions. The best one at the moment is called isomorphic.
In this model, we"re asking the client to load the first request on their server, and then any future requests are made client-side.
So Googlebot comes to the page, the client’s server has already executed the initial JavaScript needed for the page, sends the rendered HTML down to the browser, and anything after that is done on the client-side.
I won’t go into details on this, but just know that Google’s previous AJAX crawling solution for JavaScript has since been discontinued and will eventually not work. We shouldn’t be recommending this method.
(However, I am interested to hear any case studies from anyone who has implemented this solution recently. How has Google responded? Also, here’s a great write-up on this from my colleague Rob.)
Summary
At the risk of severely oversimplifying, here"s what you need to do in order to start working with JavaScript and SEO in 2018:
Know when/where your client’s domain uses client-side JavaScript to load in on-page content or links.
Ask the developers.
Turn off JavaScript and do some manual testing by page template.
Crawl using a JavaScript crawler.
Check to see if GoogleBot is seeing content the way we intend it to.
Google’s mobile friendliness checker.
Doing a site:search for visible content on the page.
I’m really interested to hear about any of your experiences with JavaScript and SEO. What are some examples of things that have worked well for you? What about things that haven’t worked so well? If you’ve implemented an isomorphic setup, I’m curious to hear how that’s impacted how Googlebot sees your site.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don"t have time to hunt down but want to read!
One of the first things that beginner SEOs get in contact with is link building, often far before they even hear about content quality or even basic things like proper keyword research or title optimization.
Link building is the most controversial topic in SEO and I believe that we should encourage people on not focusing too much on links alone . And in years of doing link building campaigns, I’ve learned a thing or two. So here they are: 12 lessons I’ve learned from dozens of link building campaign I’ve been working on.
If you’re an experienced SEO, you’re probably not very impressed about this first point. But there’s a big reason why it’s first in this list. I’ll ask you a question:
When you first started building links, what was the very first thing you tried?
If you’re an honest man, you’ll probably say that some sort of blackhat link building.
As I said, new SEOs often learn about link building first, far before they hear about anything else. Don’t believe me? Well, with all the (often contradicting) information overload on the internet, people turn to forums to get answers cleared out, because they can read the opinions of a dozen different people at once, or even ask questions directly themselves. Just take a look at one example from a forum:
Now you might be saying “Yes, but that’s a BlackHat SEO forum. I know it.” Well, that’s true, but take a look at how he says he’s new to SEO and has $ 600 to spend, yet he already knows about tools and link buying.
So it’s pretty clear that this beginner already knows something about SEO, just not the right stuff. Why? Because BlackHat SEO looks appealing. You apparently get quick results for very little work. Coming up with cool content ideas is hard and time consuming. Writing them even harder.
In reality, BlackHat SEO tools are expensive and have a huge learning curve. You’re better off building something solid and safe from the start.
How am I so sure? Well, because I’ve been there. I wanted to make my life easy. I purchased ScrapeBox, GSA Search Engine Ranker, Captcha Breaker and other software, in an attempt to easy my job.
I spent weeks if not months to learn the software, time in which I had other expenses that I wasn’t aware of at first, such as proxies. In the end, I realized that most links the tools were building were crap ones, because most websites didn’t only had captchas (which Captcha Breaker could occasionally pass) but were also moderator approved.
The results? Not impressive. Low to medium results with pretty much a lot of money, effort and stress put in. By low to medium results I mean not on page 1.
All this happened because I missed one key point. The user. I was so caught in my link building that I completely ignored other things. If I did any OnPage SEO, I constantly thought of ways to include more keywords on a page without looking TOO obvious, but never actually thought about the end user for a bit.
And I haven’t even mentioned penalties yet. I haven’t really experienced penalties personally (yet again I didn’t quite stick with blackhat methods for long) but many of our cognitiveSEO users and clients that I personally consult know very well the dangers of blackhat link building.
The real results started kicking in when I finally thought about how to make my website and content genuinely useful for the users. Sure, there are a lot of advanced tactics, technical optimizations and marketing schemes you can perform, but at the core, user experience is king.
There are also ISP (Internet Service Providers) issues. If you start spamming the web, they will eventually phone you to ask you if everything’s alright. You’ll have to lie, obviously, because it’s against their ToS and probably even illegal in some places.
A Black Hat Link Building Story
I interviewed a guy once and he told me about how he used to make around $ 1000 – $ 2000 per month by spamming the web. That sounds good, but he ended up with very little profit.
At first, he was only spamming with one computer and a dozen of proxies, averaging about $ 75 to $ 100 per month. So he then thought “Hey, why don’t I scale this up?”. Well… scaling up was a big investment. He ended up buying around 20 computers and also spent a lot of money on the energy bill and the internet service package. The total spending was close to $ 10000.
In about 3-4 months, Google started catching up with his scheme and penalized his websites. He started everything allover again, trying to stay under the radar, but each time, Google caught him. It took less and less for Google to catch up. At first 2-3 months, then 1-2 months until he abandoned everything.
With only 2-3 moths of full earnings, he ended up banking less than he spend on the whole setup. He could of course profit by selling the setup, which is a lot more time consuming than purchasing it. In the end, he ended up having nothing solid and realized it isn’t worth it.
2. Building Free Links Manually Takes Ages & Comes With a Lot of Disappointment
Clients ask about links almost all the time. “They heard that it helps with rankings, so they want as many as possible.” People usually ask for SEO consultancy offers and how many links per month they contain. it seems that in order to have an “SEO package”offer, you need to have some links there.
However, coming back to reality, it just isn’t possible to promise someone a number of links per month, unless you have a predefined set of website you link out from, which makes everything less relevant and more risky.
Not only that but you also put everyone at risk, because similar link patterns attract more attention and can impact the whole network. This means that if Google hits one site for link spam, it might hit every site with a similar link pattern. This is also the case with buying links, not only with building them. BlackHat tactics affect everyone, not only the performer.
I’ve been able to outrank and pull out my middle finger to websites that had dozens of very expensive links purchased and probably PBNs, all with almost no link building at all. I also did manual ‘link building’ here and there, but we’ll talk about it later in the article. I’ll explain why I’ve put link building between brackets, so keep reading.
To be honest, building links manually is just like using a BlackHat link building tool, but 100000 times slower and infinitely more frustrating, because there’s no filter for the failure (like the software), which now goes directly into your soul.
You, doing manual link building.
A friend of mine was recently assigned to build some manual links at his work place. After about one week, he sent me this message: “I feel like I’m doing this for nothing.”
3. Bought Links and PBNs are Too Expensive & Too risky
After finding out that manual link building literally makes you cry blood, I decided to purchase some links.
Here and there, you could get an occasional $ 10 per link, on a random worthless blogspot. For the real links, on news websites, for example, we were talking about $ 400 to $ 1000 per link. Many would also ask for monthly payments of $ 50 to $ 200 to keep a link online.
Of course, these prices apply to the markets I am familiar with; in other niches, links are probably a lot more expensive.
PBNs can probably be more efficient, however the risks are high and you also need to spend a lot of time creating them and making sure Google won’t catch them.
A Private Blog Network’s primary cost is content, which you could be very well creating on your main site.
Here’s a glimpse of how much it would cost you to build a PBN if you want to avoid doing the work yourself. Although these guys probably know what they’re doing, the risks are still there.
As long as you have multiple quality websites that you take care of, I don’t see the problem with interlinking them. However, you have to take into account the fact that Google might see it as a PBN and penalize it. I’d focus on one website first and when it really goes good and competition is already behind, I’d expand with another one.
It’s just that… sometimes, dofollow links ‘for SEO’ are more expensive than a regular advertising post on a high authority, high traffic, well established website. I consider the latter to be more effective. If you find a great advertorial opportunity/deal to get your product or website featured, then by all means go for it. But it’s a better idea if the link has a nofollow tag and if the promotion is clearly specified in the article.
4. Forum Posts & Blog Commenting ARE Useful for SEO
Wait! Isn’t this a BlackHat Tactic? I know, this might sound counter intuitive. But the answer si no, it isn’t a BlackHat tactic.
Forums are communities in which people share opinions, ideas and they are also a great resource. Blog comments are the way readers and content creators interact with each other.
In order to get links, you need to build connections. If you build connections then you’re doing forum posting and blog commenting the right way. Connections help you get more link opportunities. You get to know one webmaster, then they introduce you to another and so on.
But that’s not the only way to build connections. You can also go to meetings. Meetings and events are probably the most efficient marketing strategy you can spend time on. You can build more connections, land more leads and secure more clients in one single event ore meeting than you can in months of online efforts.
Sometimes, it’s not easy to find an event in your niche, but there definitely are adjacent niches where you can go. You just have to think outside the box. Alcohol brands, for example, promote a lot on music festivals. If you make shoes, you don’t have to find a shoemaker meeting. Just go to a fashion meetup, or maybe sports one, depending on your products.
Me (on the right) networking at an E-commerce Summit 2018
You might often meet bloggers in similar or adjacent niches and you can collaborate with them. You can also connect with them online, on their blogs. Chances of you getting your comments approved now are much higher. Most of the forum and blog comment links are nofollow anyway, but that’s not a problem, because nofollow links actually help you rank better. I have proof, keep reading.
If you have a small/medium website or a blog, don’t dismiss comments and forum posts completely.
5. Nofollow Links DO Help You Rank Better
We all want dofollow links. Not just for SEO, but even for our own sake. A nofollow sounds sort of like mentioning someone, but talking badly of him. In reality, nofollow links aren’t bad. They can still help you rank better. If you want proof, check out this article about nofollow links.
Countless times has it been proven to me that nofollow links help you rank higher.
If you do purchase an advertorial with a link, not only will you theoretically be legal by using a nofollow link, but you’ll tell Google “Hey, I’m following the rules. Are we cool?”.
Try it and you’ll see for yourself. Just don’t bother building useless nofollow links from spam or random posts on random blogs and forums. Use proper advertising on relevant websites with good traffic and adequate audience. That’s the best way to go for.
It’s funny, I’ve even found another “X link building mistakes” article which states that building nofollow links is in fact a mistake. A mistake is having an unnatural link profile and a 100% dofollow link profile is definitely unnatural.
The problem with dofollow links is that Google wants them to come naturally, without any monetary incentives. So Google decided to create the nofollow tag to be added to sponsored links. Obviously, nobody cared about that and Google had to bring in penalties.
So everytime you buy dofollow links, you’re exposing yourself to the risk of penalty. Google penalizes sites both ways, so publishers started avoiding giving dofollow links altogether.
John Mueller confirmed that adding a nofollow tag to any kind of paid or incentivised link will remove the risk of a Google Penalty.
Now I’m just making assumptions, but I don’t find it hard for Google to realize a MyBusiness review is fake, if some account with a high activity in local stores from Texas reviews a restaurant from North Dakota, without ever visiting it.
Same goes with buying links. We’re all using Gmail, and even if we don’t, we’re probably logged in a Google account in some way, through our browser. It wouldn’t be hard for Google to figure out connections between webmasters.
I know, it sounds paranoid, but since they have patents on listening to what you say through your microphone to server you personalized ads… I don’t know what isn’t possible.
6. Google Can’t Penalize Everyone & Won’t Penalize You for What You Did 5 Years Ago
At first, when looking at a very competitive niche and seeing a ton of BlackHat links, you might be thinking that it works and that’s the way to go. That’s not the point. Google doesn’t rank the website with the most links, it ranks the best website.
What John is saying is that most unnatural links are actually ignored. So if a site does have unnatural links, it doesn’t mean it isn’t still the best result out there. Google tries to satisfy the user, not the other websites. If the user isn’t satisfied, it stops coming on Google.
For example, let’s suppose that Adidas and Nike do a lot of BlackHat SEO, but some Chinese ghost brands like Abibas and Nikae do WhiteHat SEO. Should Google rank those when people search for “best sport shoes brands”?
And if all websites that rank for a keyword were to be penalized… who would be ranking? Nobody?
If your competitors are ranking above you but they have a lot of spammy links, you might want to read this article about how to outrun them.
You have to take into account that Google gives a lot more damns about user experience that it gives about links. If you build 100 links and Google boosts you up, it won’t be long until it drops you back forever if your website sucks.
If your competition is full of spammy links or purchased links, you’re at an advantage. Google is always looking for the perfect candidate to put it on spot #1. Focus on doing something better or just as good as them. Only after that think of ways to promote your website and obtain backlinks.
Also, if you start doing SEO for a new client, unless the client is obviously penalized, focus on earning new links instead of getting rid of old ones.
7. Focusing on Link Building Alone is Just NOT Worth It Overall
Now… Don’t get me wrong. Links are useful. You should try to get them, as much as possible. You should be always looking for new link opportunities.
So if someone tells you “Hey, cool content man, I’ll write about it and link to you.” don’t go and tell them “No thanks, man. I don’t do link building.” That would be… dumb. It’s just that people get it wrong and instead of acquiring links the right way, they sell their souls to the devil for links.
Quality links are a byproduct of good marketing, the one thing you should be chasing instead of links alone.
Even here, at cognitiveSEO we’ve focused more on content creation and promotion over the past 2 years. The results were visibly better than anything we’ve tried in the past, when building links was the cool kid. Our traffic went up and so did the interactions with our content.
By writing quality content we were even able to land a couple of guest posts every year, without even asking for them. People would simply read our content and ask us if we can write for them. That’s a great way to get a link back to one of your articles or even products. Now imagine our success rate if we actually chased guest posts. However…
8. Guest Posts are Useful… But…
You see, when you do guest posts, the best possible outcome for you is to write something really good. If you write low quality guest posts, you get low quality results with them. Nobody will read them and the host will probably never work with you again.
If you write a successful post, that ranks high and actually drives traffic to the hosts website and even gets people to link to it, then you’re prone to write again there soon. Isn’t it awesome to have a writer that can bring traffic to your website? I hope you see where this is going.
Wouldn’t you rather have a good writer that brings targeted traffic… on your own website, instead of someone else’s website?
A couple of guest posts here and there on really authoritative websites in your niche are useful, of course, and you should go for it. But I’d rather spend some money on an advertorial on a website that won’t accept guest posts but could actually bring me real traffic. It’s a lot less work and probably a lot more profitable.
Often times the links you get from guest posts aren’t even dofollow. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the best outcome would be if those links actually drove targeted traffic to your website, instead of just staying there only for Google. It’s not even guaranteed that Google will take it into consideration.
Spend more time creating quality content on your website instead of creating quality content on other people’s websites.
Most of the times, the #1 competitor has a higher percentage of branded anchor texts, averaging at about 60-70%.
Here’s one competitive analysis from the cognitiveSEO Tool:
If we take a look at the anchor text distribution or the top competitor (the one with score 9), we’ll see that it mostly has branded anchor texts. They know it works, so they do it. This is valid regardless of the naturalness of the link profile. Even if the links are natural or unnatural, sites with more branded anchor texts tend to outperform the ones with only commercial anchor texts.
Branded anchor texts are great because they help grow the overall authority of your website. This means that when you’ll have new posts, they will rank better on their own, without needing to get any links to them.
However, it’s always a good idea to also have some commercial keywords there as well. This will let Google better understand what the page is about.
But it’s just so more much natural for people to link to a website using it’s brand rather than a very specific keyword. Just think about it. If you were to link to a new product, how would you rather do it?
Example:
Go to shoes.com if you want to purchase these awesome running shoes.
You can find these awesome running shoes on shoes.com.
Using commercial anchor texts just feels so… forced. It’s so obvious even for a common reader to realize that the keyword is put there on purpose.
Many times, editors and webmasters even naturally use miscellaneous anchor texts like ‘official website’ or ‘click here’.
Example:
To get these awesome shoes from Nike you can click here.
However, you don’t even need to build commercial anchor texts externally, because you can do it on your own website, which takes us to our next lesson…
10. Internal Linking is An Awesome Way to Include Commercial Anchor Texts
If you can’t get any commercial anchor text backlinks without emptying your wallet, then you can use your own website to create keyword right anchor texts through internal linking.
The only issue here is content. If you don’t have any, you won’t be able to interlink. If you have a very popular article about a very common question in your niche that you’ve answered, you can use that article to pass its authority to a page you want to rank, such as a product category one.
Lacking internal structure is a massive waste of opportunity, because it’s something you have complete control over. It’s easy to do, but as anything else in SEO, overdoing it is risky. Read our guide about internal linking if you want to learn how to do it the right way.
11. Unlinked Brand Mentions Can Pay Off Really Well
If you want to get some relatively easy links, then look for people that have mentioned you, but haven’t linked to you.
A great and easy way to find these unlinked brand mentions is to use … BrandMentions. Pretty straight forward, isn’t it? The tool does a great job at identifying these and also at filtering them.
Before you reach out to the webmasters asking them to quickly link to your website, remember that building a connection is more important. It’s a good idea to thank them first and then suggest or ask for a link.
This only really works well if you’re an already established brand, but also for local businesses and events. You can also use the tool to monitor when any other keywords (such as your product category) shows up on the web.
12. You CAN Rank a Website High by Earning Links
I’ve ranked plenty of websites without any link building, just by creating great content consistently and promoting it properly.
I’m not saying that these websites didn’t have links at all, I’m just saying I wasn’t building or buying them. The came naturally from genuine connections and proposals and quality content.
Instead of link building, you can take the link earning approach. The concept is simple. Do stuff that deserves and attracts natural links
Easy to say, right?
Well, it’s not that hard to do either, actually. Here are just some ideas, besides the general rule of thumb of creating high quality content.
debating a long time controversial topic
engaging audiences in real time through live blogging/vlogging
interview interesting people in your industry
However, for this to work, you have to remember that building connections is the best thing you can do. Although network marketing can be annoying, the truth is that we all are network marketers, one way or another.
Conclusion
These 5 years of experience taught me enough to know that I can spend my time better somewhere else. I’ve learned a lot more things, but I’ve tried to cover the most important ones. Maybe I’ll expand the list some day.
As a closing note, content creation and link earning > spam & link building. You can try both paths to figure it out yourself, or you can just avoid the pain by taking my advice. In the end, you’re the one to decide.
Building content isn’t only helpful for SEO, but also from a marketing perspective. If you don’t become a publisher, you’ll keep paying publishers to feature your products.
Most of the publishers out there are usually review and affiliate websites, because that’s what people look for before they buy. Of course, if you’re a maker, you can’t review yourself or your competitors. But you can win their trust by answering questions. And trust, in business, is priceless. It cannot be bought. Only earned.
What have you learned about link building in your SEO adventures? Share it with us in the comments and let’s chat about it!
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