During March, Jellyfish attended an exclusive invitation-only seminar hosted in Google London, and featuring a trio of top-level Google search engineers flown in from Mountain View CA.
This SEO-focused session allowed us to hear first hand viewpoints on a range of key SEO issues, and also to engage in a lively post-presentation Q&A session.
2. Jellyfish POV
Google SEO Seminar | Summary & Key Learnings
Google Webmaster EDU Seminar, London – March 2012
During March, Jellyfish attended an exclusive invitation-only
seminar hosted in Google London, and featuring a trio of top-level
Google search engineers flown in from Mountain View CA.
This SEO-focused session allowed us to hear first hand viewpoints
on a range of key SEO issues, and also to engage in a lively post-
presentation Q&A session. Attending from Google were:
Jack Menzel, Director of Product Management, Search
Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst
Anthony Chavez, Snr Product Manager, Webmaster Tools & Rich
Snippets
Session focus
Best practice on use of rich snippets
Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst
Anthony Chavez, Snr Product Manager, Webmaster Tools & Rich
Snippets
Top Three Takeaways
Sounds good, so let’s take a closer look at some of our favourite
features and how they manifest themselves in the Google Analytics
interface.
1. Google is keen to promote the use of rich snippets. Their view is
that an improved user experience is delivered by investing data
(Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS)) with knowledge (rich
snippets).
Cynical view: Google is extracting more content from your landing
pages, encouraging users to spend more time looking at the SERPs
(and eye-balling Google PPC ads).
Positive view: SERPs becomes a better place to make an informed
decision, consumers have more intent when they click through,
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3. Jellyfish POV
Google SEO Seminar | Summary & Key Learnings
everyone is happy! Regardless of your view, implementing rich
snippets does deliver benefits in terms of ‘stand out’ value, and will
most likely drive better CTRs, hence more traffic, and (of course)
better rankings as CTR is a known ranking signal.
2. Google refused to be drawn on any questions regarding recent
algorithm changes, and whether (for example) building
relationships between credible people and content using
rel=author or similar would result in superior visibility. For example,
they said:
'If you are chasing the algorithm, by definition you are losing.'
However, there were hints regarding the importance of people and
content; for example:
‘We want to make the web more conversational….the next evolution
of the web is from what a page is to who authored it; we want to
provide trusted content from a trusted authoritative person.’
This makes total sense: as Google moves the algorithm to factor in
signals related more closely to social and inter-personal
relationships, why not leverage personal credibility so that even
respected people who are outside my social circles matter?
We raised an obvious tactical question; how is personal credibility
measured and how significant is this to the visibility of a page?
Google’s response was part of a repeated theme throughout the
Q&A, ‘create a great website, with engaging content, and leave the
signals for us to figure out’….no surprise there!
3. Google’s latest over-optimisation / anti-spam update was
discussed; no details were given on precise factors that would be
evaluated. However, there was one crucial insight. Any anti-spam
violations – i.e. when a site is de-listed – are based on manual
review by Google, and are not ‘triggered’ by the algorithm. What
does this mean? Well, simply that the latest algorithm must be
designed to ‘triage’ spamming behaviour pretty well, well enough
so that decisions on potentially millions of sites across the web can
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4. Jellyfish POV
Google SEO Seminar | Summary & Key Learnings
be made by humans. In other words, expect Google to get much
better at automatically detecting sites with artificial link profiles
and reducing their visibility, but not de-listing from SERPs. Another
‘goodbye look’ for traditional link building.
Themes / Learnings in more detail
A number of details emerged from both the presentations and the
ensuing Q&A sessions:
Given the increasing richness / complexity of information
presented online, ‘old-school’ on page optimisation (for example,
focusing on page titles, H tags etc.) will not be enough to ensure
that content responds effectively to search queries; content
requires deeper layers of ingrained relevancy to ensure that
consumers search demands are being met.
For example, a search result that combines product features,
location requirements and an inherent quality variable e.g. ‘three
bedroom luxury apartment near Chelsea’ would be more useful to
consumers if enhanced with page-level mark up to confirm location
details e.g. post code.
Hence, Google are keen to promote the use of structured mark
up, and resulting rich snippets. Why rich snippets? Here’s a
summary of benefits:
1. Drawing a user's attention to your relevant result
2. Providing instant information as related to their query
3. Increasing click-through rates and lessen the amount of
bounces due to searchers not finding the content they were
looking for
The relationship between people and content was a recurring
theme; Google is keen to use personal authority as a signal of
content quality, now best signified by use of the rel=author rich
snippet attribute
Review you content, and confirm where rich snippets can be
applied. The current list of supported themes is quite broad, and
consists of:
Authorship
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5. Jellyfish POV
Google SEO Seminar | Summary & Key Learnings
Breadcrumbs
Events
Music
Organizations
People
Products
Recipes
Review ratings
Reviews
Software applications
Supported software application types
Videos: Facebook Share and RDFa
Reviews, recipes and people present clear opportunities for
many brands
Brand can now configure Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) to
alert them via email when a Webmaster guidelines violation (e.g.
spam) is detected
GWT can also show Google +1 metrics, specifically the
differences in CTR between +1 and non +1 pages
Summary and next steps
If you’d like more information on how to implement rich snippets,
or how best to set up and use GWT, do get in touch, we’d be happy
to help. And in the meantime, we’ll keep you posted on any further
updates re. search quality and algorithm changes.
And in the meantime, a selection of our POVs is available to view
and download at
http://www.slideshare.net/JellyfishOnlineMarketing
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