The Future of Technical SEO

1. The Future of Technical SEO
2019 Advanced Search Summit in Napa
Patrick Kajirian

2. Where is Google Headed?

3. Google’s Big Play
● Big Data & Cloud Computing
○ More data storage
○ Scalable computational power
○ Robust data aggregation
○ Ubiquitous computing
● Machine Learning & Neural Networks
○ Natural language understanding
○ Virtual Assistants
○ Image recognition
○ Live transcription of video/audio
○ Structured data extraction

4. AI Applications Within Google’s Ecosystem
● AlphaZero, a single system, taught
itself chess, shogi, and Go then
defeated the world-champion
computer program of each game.
● Game masters cite AlphaZero’s style
of play as ground-breaking, highly
dynamic, and “unconventional” by
human standards.

5. AI Applications Within Google’s Ecosystem
Google Lens Google Photos

6. AI Applications Within Google’s Ecosystem
● Google Duplex bridges the divide
between Google’s systems and the
real-world.
○ Used by the Google Assistant to book
appointments with offline business.
○ Used to verify local business data within
Google Maps at scale.

7. AI Applications Within Google’s Search Algorithm
RankBrain
● Helps Google better relate
pages to concepts and
understand searcher intent.
● Considered the “third most
important ranking signal”.
● Live since 2015, gets
periodically re-trained.
● More accurate than human
search engineers.
Neural Matching
● Helps Google better relate
words to searches.
● Impacts 30% of queries as of
Sept 2018.
“Machine learning generated algorithms
are more obscure to humans, and hence
require more validation and testing than
human ones.” - Eric Enge

8. How is Technical SEO Evolving?

9. Evolution of Page Discovery & Index Management
PAST PRESENT FUTURE
Limited crawl budget Improved crawl budget Unlimited crawl budget
Desktop only index Mobile first index, desktop index Mobile, desktop, voice index
No JavaScript content got indexed Delayed indexing of JavaScript content Instant indexing of JavaScript content
XML sitemaps were important XML sitemaps are important
Product feeds are supported
XML sitemaps will be less important
Indexing API
Pagination tags were important Pagination tags are depreciated
Canonical tag was important Canonical tag is important Canonical tag will be depreciated

10. Evolution of Content Relevance & Data Extraction
PAST PRESENT FUTURE
Meta Keywords tag was important Meta Keywords tag is depreciated
No natural language understanding Basic natural language understanding
(RankBrain & Neural Matching)
Perfected natural language
understanding
User-driven image captioning User-driven image captioning
Basic AI image recognition
Perfected AI image recognition
Alt tags will be depreciated
User-driven video/audio transcription User-driven video/audio transcription
Basic AI video/audio transcription
Perfected AI video/audio transcription
Microdata/Schema Markup (video,
recipes, products, ratings, nav, etc.)
Microdata/Schema Markup & JSON-LD
(news headlines for voice search)
Structured Data will be depreciated

11. Evolution of Authority & Ranking Signals
PAST PRESENT FUTURE
All content mattered High quality content is an advantage Poor quality content will be penalized
All backlinks mattered Quality backlinks are critical
(trusted source, topically authoritative)
Mentions matter (text)
Quality backlinks will matter less
Mentions will matter more (text or
voice)
Context didn’t matter Context matters
(location, search history)
Context will really matter
(more personalization, peer affiliation)
Site security didn’t matter HTTPS is a slight ranking boost
Pages with malware are flagged
Non HTTPS sites will be penalized
Sites with malware will be penalized

12. Evolution of Authority & Ranking Signals
PAST PRESENT FUTURE
Site speed didn’t matter Being fast is a competitive advantage Being slow will be a ranking penalty
AMP will be deprecated
UX didn’t matter UX matters
(mobile-unfriendliness & intrusive
interstitials yield slight penalties)
UX will matter more
(poor UX will be heavily penalized)
Engagement metrics (bounce rates,
time on site, etc.) didn’t matter
Engagement metrics “don’t directly
influence rankings” (data is too noisy)
Engagement metrics will directly
influence rankings (RankBrain)
Social media signals (likes, shares,
etc.) didn’t matter
Social media signals “don’t directly
influence rankings” (data is too noisy)
Social media signals won’t matter
because AI-powered social engineering
will be rampant

13. How are Tools Adapting?

14. Tools are Adapting
● Generative adversarial network (GAN) systems
● Deepfake video systems
thispersondoesnotexist.com McAfee DeepFake Video Demo

15. Tools are Adapting
● AI-powered content generators
○ OpenAI’s GPT2 text generator is so good it was
deemed too risky to release publicly.
SYSTEM PROMPT (HUMAN-WRITTEN)
In a shocking finding, scientist discovered a herd of unicorns living in a remote,
previously unexplored valley, in the Andes Mountains. Even more surprising to the
researchers was the fact that the unicorns spoke perfect English.
MODEL COMPLETION (MACHINE-WRITTEN, 10 TRIES)
The scientist named the population, after their distinctive horn,
Ovid’s Unicorn. These four-horned, silver-white unicorns were
previously unknown to science.
Now, after almost two centuries, the mystery of what sparked this
odd phenomenon is finally solved.
Dr. Jorge Pérez, an evolutionary biologist from the University of La
Paz, and several companions, were exploring the Andes Mountains when
they found a small valley, with no other animals or humans. Pérez
noticed that the valley had what appeared to be a natural fountain,
surrounded by two peaks of rock and silver snow.
Pérez and the others then ventured further into the valley. “By the
time we reached the top of one peak, the water looked blue, with
some crystals on top,” said Pérez.
Pérez and his friends were astonished to see the unicorn herd. These
creatures could be seen from the air without having to move too much
to see them – they were so close they could touch their horns.
While examining these bizarre creatures the scientists discovered
that the creatures also spoke some fairly regular English. Pérez
stated, “We can see, for example, that they have a common
‘language,’ something like a dialect or dialectic.”
Dr. Pérez believes that the unicorns may have originated in
Argentina, where the animals were believed to be descendants of a
lost race of people who lived there before the arrival of humans in
those parts of South America.
While their origins are still unclear, some believe that perhaps the
creatures were created when a human and a unicorn met each other in
a time before human civilization. According to Pérez, “In South
America, such incidents seem to be quite common.”
However, Pérez also pointed out that it is likely that the only way
of knowing for sure if unicorns are indeed the descendants of a lost
alien race is through DNA. “But they seem to be able to communicate
in English quite well, which I believe is a sign of evolution, or at
least a change in social organization,” said the scientist.

16. Tools are Adapting
● AI-powered content generators
○ Automated Insights has a natural language
generation platform that uses data to “automate
journalism”.
■ Associated Press transforms corporate
earnings data into thousands of publishable
stories.
■ Yahoo! automates fantasy football draft
reports and match recaps.

17. Tools are Adapting
● Content writing tools improve topical relevance
○ E.g. Searchmetrics’ Content Experience or Ryte

18. Tools are Adapting
● Deeper datasets & robust visualization tools
○ Data aggregation via APIs
○ More insightful log analysis
● More sophisticated crawling tools
○ Improved browser emulation
○ Cloud, local client & hybrid spidering tools

19. How do I Future Proof My SEO?

20. Future Proof Your SEO
● Leverage AI tools to optimize for content relevance.
● Focus on user experience.
● Optimize for voice search where relevant.
● Tap into data to better inform SEO opportunities.
● Get ahead of Google’s research.
a. Google AI Blog - ai.googleblog.com
b. Monitor Google’s Patents & White Papers.
i. Patents.google.com
ii. Bill Slawski’s blog - www.seobythesea.com

21. Thank You!
Patrick Kajirian
LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/patrickkajirian
Twitter - @pkajirian