Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz
| @randfish | rand@moz.com B2B SEO in 2017 Search trends, opportunities, & tactics to succeed

Slides online at
bit.ly/b2bseo17

Search Trends

Where Do People Search?

Breakdown of Searches on Major
Web Properties (October 2016)

Breakdown of Searches on Major
Web Properties (May 2017)

GoogleCore Oct2016 May2017 GoogleImages Yahoo
Bing GoogleMaps Amazon Facebook Gained/Lost 58.9% 27.7% 2.6% 2.3% 2.2% 1.9% 0.7% YouTube 3.8% 64.8% 21.8% 2.4% 2.4% 1.2% 2.3% 1.5% 3.6% +5.9 -5.9 -0.2 +0.1 -1.0 +0.4 +0.8 -0.2

GoogleCore Oct2016 May2017 GoogleImages Yahoo
Bing GoogleMaps Amazon Facebook Gained/Lost 58.9% 27.7% 2.6% 2.3% 2.2% 1.9% 0.7% YouTube 3.8% 64.8% 21.8% 2.4% 2.4% 1.2% 2.3% 1.5% 3.6% +5.9 -5.9 -0.2 +0.1 -1.0 +0.4 +0.8 -0.2 We think this is Halloween

GoogleCore Oct2016 May2017 GoogleImages Yahoo
Bing GoogleMaps Amazon Facebook Gained/Lost 58.9% 27.7% 2.6% 2.3% 2.2% 1.9% 0.7% YouTube 3.8% 64.8% 21.8% 2.4% 2.4% 1.2% 2.3% 1.5% 3.6% +5.9 -5.9 -0.2 +0.1 -1.0 +0.4 +0.8 -0.2This is compensated for by a rise in web search clicks to local results

GoogleCore Oct2016 May2017 GoogleImages Yahoo
Bing GoogleMaps Amazon Facebook Gained/Lost 58.9% 27.7% 2.6% 2.3% 2.2% 1.9% 0.7% YouTube 3.8% 64.8% 21.8% 2.4% 2.4% 1.2% 2.3% 1.5% 3.6% +5.9 -5.9 -0.2 +0.1 -1.0 +0.4 +0.8 -0.2 I’m keeping an eye on these two

Google’s Growth So far, 2017
is trending ~10-15% higher than 2016, not including voice or Apple devices

Total Searchers vs.Active Searchers United
States Canada United Kingdom Average Searches/Month %ofSearchersw/10+ Searches/Month 103-119 120-139 120-135 ~39% ~40% ~41%

Google CTR Breakdown Relatively flat
excluding seasonality = SEO not being cannibalized by Google’s own results

What Are the Web’s Top
Traffic Referrers?

Google.com Oct2016 May2017 Facebook.com Reddit.com
YouTube.com Imgur.com Bing.com Wikipedia.org Gained/Lost 59.2% 6.5% 5.4% 4.5% 2.2% 2.2% 1.4% Yahoo.com 6.0% 62.6% 5.9% 4.1% 4.7% 1.5% 2.1% 1.4% 5.0% +3.4% -0.6% -1.3% +0.2% -0.6% -0.1% +0% -1.0% Amazon.com 1.3% 1.4% +0.1%

Google.com Oct2016 May2017 Facebook.com Reddit.com
YouTube.com Imgur.com Bing.com Wikipedia.org Gained/Lost 59.2% 6.5% 5.4% 4.5% 2.2% 2.2% 1.4% Yahoo.com 6.0% 62.6% 5.9% 4.1% 4.7% 1.5% 2.1% 1.4% 5.0% +3.4% -0.6% -1.3% +0.2% -0.6% -0.1% +0% -1.0% Amazon.com 1.3% 1.4% +0.1% This is when Reddit stopped using Imgur for all its image hosting

Google.com Oct2016 May2017 Facebook.com Reddit.com
YouTube.com Imgur.com Bing.com Wikipedia.org Gained/Lost 59.2% 6.5% 5.4% 4.5% 2.2% 2.2% 1.4% Yahoo.com 6.0% 62.6% 5.9% 4.1% 4.7% 1.5% 2.1% 1.4% 5.0% +3.4% -0.6% -1.3% +0.2% -0.6% -0.1% +0% -1.0% Amazon.com 1.3% 1.4% +0.1% In 7 months, Google gained more share than all but the top 5 even have 

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K
10K+ Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2% Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3% Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4% Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2% Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2% NotAll Referrers Send Traffic Equally (data below from May 2017)

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K
10K+ Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2% Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3% Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4% Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2% Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2% NotAll Referrers Send Traffic Equally (data below from May 2017) Google distributes traffic pretty evenly

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K
10K+ Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2% Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3% Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4% Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2% Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2% NotAll Referrers Send Traffic Equally (data below from May 2017) Facebook is strongly biased to the top

Top 10 11-100 101-1K 1K-10K
10K+ Google 22.2% 14.9% 18.0% 18.7% 26.2% Facebook 42.7% 17.7% 15.3% 12.9% 11.3% Yahoo 39.2% 15.8% 15.6% 14.0% 15.4% Reddit 75.2% 11.0% 7.2% 4.4% 2.2% Youtube 80.1% 7.2% 5.4% 4.1% 3.2% NotAll Referrers Send Traffic Equally (data below from May 2017) Reddit & YouTube even more so

Search Queries & Clicks

Google SearchActivity The average searcher
does ~3.4 queries per day on their desktop and mobile (each).

Mobile CTR 2.0% on Paid
40.9% on Organic 57.1% Don’t Click

2.8% on Paid Desktop CTR
62.2% on Organic 35% Don’t Click

CTR on Google Mobile vs.
Desktop There may be more traffic opportunity from desktop STILL due to higher CTR Source

SEO Opportunities

The Ever-Expanding Landscape of Search
Results

18 Unique Types of SERPs
that Show Up in 0.5%+ of Google’s Results One of my favorites: the “disaster type” answer

In our data, only ~3%
of SERPs contain exclusively “ten blue links” results

SERPs like these are far
more common

These types of results can
dramatically reduce organic CTR (in this case, Moz estimates only ~24% organic CTR)

Infuriatingly, Google’s restricted who can
appear in certain types of listings (e.g. video is now YouTube or Vimeo only)

And on mobile, even more
kinds of searches are limited to particular networks (Google Play & iPhone App Store).

We expected answers like these
would siphon away traffic from our site… In reality, we got more! Featured Snippets are one of the most powerful forms of this:

But some answers really do
remove traffic (estimates of 50%+ traffic loss to web results after SERP changes like these)

Consider Click-Through-Rate When Choosing Keywords
(and SERP types to target) The organic results on this page probably get only ~60% of the clicks from searchers

Consider Click-Through-Rate When Choosing Keywords
But, the organic results here are likely getting 100% of the clicks

Analyze Which Types of SERPsAppear
Most in the Keywords You CareAbout These show me how many of each SERP type appears in the results for this keyword list (via KWE)

Then Determine What Verticals &
SERPTypes You Need to Optimize For It might pay to generate some visual charts in addition to a text- only version…

You can make these estimates
yourself when evaluating keywords for SEO effort:

Or you can use a
tool like Keyword Explorer to get the CTR Opportunity scores 100% CTR Opportunity 60% CTR Opportunity

How Google Ranks Pages

8 BroadAreas of Google’s RankingAlgorithm
(forclassic,ten-blue-linksstyleresults): Links Quality of Host Domain Query Satisfaction User Experience Personalization Technical & Crawl KeywordsContent

Does the text match what
Google’s MLsystems calculate to be relevant, high-quality, & a match for the searcher’s intent? Content

Editorially-given, anchor-text-rich, followed links from
high quality sources still matter to Google (esp. in competitive results) Links

If Google sees high rates
of pogo-sticking or other signals that your page/site isn’t solving search queries, they’ll likely rank you lower Query Satisfaction Via WB Friday

Using the searcher’s keywords intelligently
on your page still matters for rankings (and for CTR in the results) Keywords Ring failed to rank until they changed their page title to include “video doorbell”

Domains accrue signals of quality
& value. Powerful domains may give the pages they host a boost in ranking ability. Quality of Host Domain Via OSE

Google wants to see sites
provide an easy-to-use, intuitive experience on every device, at every speed, without impediment. User Experience

Speed & accessibility to crawlers
still matters, and Google still doesn’t handle non-text, or non-HTML- link accessible pages well. Technical & Crawl

The geography, device, search history,
and timing of a searcher’s query can all change Google’s results significantly. Personalization

More Ways to Rank

It’s Possible to Use SEO
to Get Into Featured Snippets (and earn big CTR boosts) They beat out Wikipedia by phrasing the content to match the *answer* Google wanted for this search query

More on How to Become
theAnswer: Via Dr. Pete (and more Dr. Pete)

Local & Maps Results Have
Different Ranking Factors “Local Pack” Results Geo-biased Web Results

Via Local Rankings Factors 2017
These Factors Govern YourAbility to Rank for Geo-biased Queries (~20% of searches)

Images, YouTube, & Top Stories
How to Rank in Google Images YouTube SEO Guide How Google Ranks Top Stories

6 Tactics for B2B SEO

#1: Low KW Demand? Rank
Twice! Smartsheet produced two separate resources to serve two unique intents Project *plan* Project *management*

#2: Rank for the Queries
BEFORE the Query Before they search for this… They search for this:

#3: Publish on Platforms that
Easily Rank Quora, Slideshare, and LinkedIn not only make it easy to publish, but rank well even without lots of links

#4: Offer Your “Lead Capture”
Content Without Barriers… A)forthefirstweek B)forvisitorsfrom socialreferrers C)forthefirst30%of thecontent

#5: Need Links? Get Proven
Contributors Buzzsumo lets you ID powerful authors & sources. You can then recruit them to your platform for high- propensity links

#6: Plan 6+ Months of
Investment w/ Little to No ROI Your first few months will probably look like this.

SEO takes time & has
a steep learning curve, but it pays off.

SEO brings in the highest
LTV customers of any channel, with the lowest CAC

And it scales like nothing
else 

Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz
| @randfish | rand@moz.com Bit.ly/b2bseo17