What Bloggers Need to Know
About SEO in 2014 Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz | @randfish | rand@moz.com

This Presentation Is Online Here:
bit.ly/blogseo2014

Topics in this Presentation: Why
Invest in SEO? Keyword Research Content Creation Amplification Link Building Go Ahead, Break the Rules Be Wary of Snake Oil Universal Blogging Truth Slides 4-10 Slides 11-30 Slide 31-46 Slides 47-54 Slides 55-75 Slides 76-80 Slides 81-86 Slides 87-96

Why? Given the rise of
social media, mobile apps, & content marketing, why bother with SEO?

Because Search Continues to Grow
Massively Almost 6 Billion queries/day

Distribution of Search Clicks ~20%
of clicks go to ads ~80% of clicks go to organic results (SEO)

Search Intent vs. Social Intent
“Do Things” Mode “Browse” Mode

The Rise of Mobile Search
Google’s suggested 2015 will be the year mobile searches surpass desktop searches (and desktop’s still growing itself, just slower!) Source: Statcounter

Early Adopter Advantage Ranking here
today means you earn traffic, links, brand awareness, press, and all the things that help you rank better in the future.

Get links Grow authority Grow
network Rank for slightly Turning the SEO Flywheel Amplify Publish more competitive terms & phrases Earn search traffic

Keyword Research When you share
a common language with your audience, everyone benefits.

What Happens Without Keyword Research
How People Search Ranks #125 (page 13) for “great barrier reef tours” How You Write

What Happens With Keyword Research
Hotel we stayed at nailing their blog content’s rankings!

Google’s Improving at Intent Matching

But they Will Never Get
Here: No offense intended, but these are not among the best travel blogs.

Start Research by Brainstorming What
are some words and phrases people commonly use to describe the broad focus areas of your blog? What searches, if people performed them and found you, would be most likely to bring you new lifelong fans? What searches that are relevant to your posts do you wish you had the #1 ranking for? If you had to make new content to reach the largest, relevant audience to your blog, what would your write about?

Use Tools to Expand Your
Ideas & Align Them With How People Search https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

You can bolster these with
suggestions from the engines

My Favorite Suggestion Tool:
http://keywordtool.io

SEMRush is Great for More
Advanced Research http://semrush.com

Eventually, You Want a List
of Targets A spreadsheet like this (or an even simpler one without difficulty, ranking, or volume) can nudge you to take be mindful and actionable about your blog’s SEO

Some KWs Are Worth Long
Term Pursuit For Moz, this phrase is critical to our thought leadership and community building efforts

Others Are Simply How You
Optimize a Post While I’m bummed our post didn’t rank for this exact phrase, it does rank for variants and we can always try again with another post in the future.

When Writing a Post, 3mins
is All I Ask First 60 Seconds Next 60 Seconds Last 60 Seconds Use tools or suggest to figure out which KW phrase to target Note some of the additional terms & phrases that can help you be relevant for additional search queries Try to employ the key terms in the title of your post, and use the additional queries in the title and body of the post in a sensible, readable way.

Let’s say I want to
write a blog post about the most evil characters in Shakespeare’s plays…

I’d start by looking at
how people search for words & phrases around this topic:

I might compare relative search
volume:

I’d choose a primary phrase
to target and some additional terms to go after as well: Primary Phrase: “Shakespeare’s Villains” Secondary Terms: Evil Characters List of Villains Quotes Shakespearean Villains Villain Names

Then I’d try to write
a headline that maximizes both reader-appeal and KW-targeting: Shakespeare’s Villains: The 22 Most Evil Characters from All 37 Plays

Not Too
Hard,
Right?

Content Creation There are two
paths bloggers can take to great content, but neither is easy or obvious.

Path 1: Publish to Help
Your Audience This post is clearly designed to help bloggers choose the right CMS

Path 2: Publish Your Passion(s)
This post was entirely self-indulgent and written to share what I was thinking about at the time.

The Question Every Content Creator
Must Ask: Who Will Amplify this Content and Why?

Who will amplify this cardboard
sandwich?

Answer: Design Blogs & Gallery
Sites!

Who’s Going to Promote Marty’s
Post About Rejecting Ivy League Schools?

Answer: College Selection Sites Fed
Up w/ the Usual Suggestions http://opensiteexplorer.org

Who will help this lovely
cake spread?

Answer: Cake-obsessed Pinteresters!

Be Aware That Most SEO
Benefit Is Earned in the First 24 Hours After Launch

Updating Old Content? You May
Want to Re- Publish and Redirect Instead: If the content and value to visitors is largely the same, consider consolidating to a single resource

When it Comes to Optimizing
Keyword Use, Don’t Sweat Being Perfect Don’t Do This

There Are General Best Practices
for Making Content SEO-Friendly:

More Details in Rand’s Visual
Guide to Optimizing Content:

If You’re Prioritizing, I Recommend:
1) Make Yourself Proud – publish content you yourself believe in and feel confident promoting. 2) Delight Your Audience – empathetically serve their needs. Launch work they will want to share. 3) Make it Search Accessible – publish in such a way that search engines can match your content to their searchers’ keywords and intent.

Amplification Great bloggers make publishing
neither the beginning nor the end of their process. They put it smack dab in the middle.

The Publishing Process: Content creation
Pre-publication outreach Publish Social media amplification Post-publication outreach

Pre-Publication Outreach Including the work/opinions,
and/or soliciting feedback of potential amplifiers can be a powerful tool

Social Media Amplification

Social Media Amplification
http://bit.ly

Post-Publication Outreach Larry’s email to
me after the publication of this piece results in my sharing it on Twitter, FB, and G+.

Which Social Networks? Choose the
platforms your audience is using! Source for this graphic

Don’t Ignore the Power of
Engagement There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that greater engagement on social leads to future amplification & support

Link Building The best links
are not built, but earned. Thankfully, there’s lots of ways to nudge 

What to Look For in
a Link: Can Send Relevant Traffic– linking sites don’t have to be “on-topic” to drive relevant traffic, but the links themselves should be tied to potential visitor interest, i.e. someone might actually click them Editorial– the link should be given because the publisher/author truly wants to endorse your site or the content of a page and not due to an exchange of goods/services/money Trustworthy Source– if the site(s) regularly links to low quality sites, is itself sketchy, or can be influenced by anyone (open to link drops), the links you get there may come with serious risk of a Google penalty

Links to Avoid: Generic directories
probably aren’t worthwhile for most blogs (even Yahoo! and DMOZ, though your mileage may vary)

Links to Avoid: Most blog
directories likely aren’t worthwhile either (and, like generic directories, some could even be risky)

Links to Avoid: In case
the 80’s business people didn’t give it away, blog carnivals, blog rings, blog link wheels, & all similar schemes are very high risk

On the Borderline: Be thoughtful
and cautious about sites that openly solicit guest posts

On the Borderline: Moz actually
offers this! But we have an extremely tight editorial review process, and only publish highly relevant, quality stuff

On the Borderline: Social profiles
can be valuable if you’re using the network, but if you’re simply trying to get profiles that will have “dofollow” links for SEO rankings, there may be risks

On the Borderline: Forum profiles
and posts are similar – if you’re really contributing, it’s OK. If you’re just there for the link, trouble may follow.

Links to Chase After: Most
links to the content I publish online are from building up a social following of interested folks and sharing

Links to Chase After: Blogrolls
and endorsements from friends, colleagues, and people who read and love your site make great links

Links to Chase After: Places
like HARO & Profnet (10 sources here) can help ID journalists in need of an expert for their story – they often love including bloggers

Links to Chase After: You
don’t even need tools – find the names of the writers who publish interviews/coverage of sites like yours and find ways to help them

Links to Chase After: Following
social accounts of writers, journalists, bloggers, and anyone who regularly produces web content can put you in front of the right people at the right time

Links to Chase After: Sometimes
it’s easier to connect with the sources the pros listen to then to influence highly-followed social accounts directly (this Followerwonk report can help)

Links to Chase After: Boom!
These less-popular accounts are followed by hugely influential people. They might be great targets.

Links to Chase After: If
you produce visual or embeddable content of any kind, use attribution licensing so sites can share your stuff and link back to you

Links to Chase After: Using
this query format can bring up loads of potential link opportunities

More Link Building Resources: Link
Building from the Moz Blog Paddy Moogan’s Link Building eBook Experts’ Favorite Link Building Tactics How to Leverage PR for Link Building The Future of Link Building

Don’t Worry About Spam You
Don’t Control: If you see spammy links in your profile that you didn’t create, don’t worry about them. If you see a lot and want to take action, you can use Google Webmasters’ disavow tool.

DO WORRY About Spam You
Created If you’re guilty, fess up, disavow, try to remove the links, and send an honest reconsideration request

Go Ahead. Break the Rules.
Don’t let SEO constrain your creativity. Use it as a tool when you need it.

Ignore Keywords Sometimes! Keywords Whatever
whatevs

Publish Quietly If You Feel
Like It

Ignore Outreach & Let Them
Come to You

Ignore SEO Entirely & Focus
On What You Love About Blogging

Be Wary of SEO Snake
Oil Like most great opportunities, SEO has numerous pitfalls for would-be shortcut takers.

e.g.

e.g.

e.g.

If It Sounds Too Good
to Be True, It Is

SEO Plugins for Blogs Can
Be a Good Start, But Aren’t the End All of SEO Yoast’s Wordpress SEO is a great tool, and it can help you avoid problems and capture opportunities, but it’s not a silver bullet!

One Universal
Blogging Truth

A lot of days feel
like this:

Most of us (foolishly) measure
ourselves in relation to the most successful outliers:

A Short Story About Geraldine’s
Blog Geraldine’s Travel Blog: http://everywhereist.com

Geraldine started her blog in
2009

For 2 years, she never
broke 100 visits/day.

This is where most people
give up.

These days, she gets 100,000+
visits each month

Every “successful” blogger I’ve ever
met has a story that looks like this. You are not alone.

The Price of Success is
Failure after Failure after Failure* * Hopefully, each of those failures provides an opportunity to learn.

bit.ly/blogseo2014 Rand Fishkin, Wizard of
Moz | @randfish | rand@moz.com