Intro into SEO for the SWCC Expo in Phoenix AZ 2017.

1. Kristine Schachinger | Twitter @schachin
Kristine@SitesWithoutWalls.com
SEO, Google, and You in 207

2. What Is SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

3. Visibility

4. Visibility Everywhere

5. Everywhere…

6. SEO is about visibility Across Platforms
and cats …

7. Ok maybe not cats..
So what is SEO?

8. You might hear what we do called..
SEO (or SEM) OR Inbound Marketing (and/or) Online Marketing (and/or)
Digital Marketing (and/or) Website Marketing

9. Maybe even voodoo … (not voodoo)

10. No … but it is complicated
What we do is about visibility.

11. AND!
Not just these factors, but
geolocalization
personalization
mobile
device type
etc.
all affect positioning…
positioning affects
traffic coming into your site

12. AND! Traffic = Money
or at least the right traffic..

13. Two kinds of basic SEO

16. What do they have in common?

18. As long as you are not…

20. WhiteHat and BlackHat
aren’t that different…

22. Except to …

29. Google wants
you to be
about Users
Not
algorithms

30. So what do
you need to
know about
Blackhat?

31. Black Hat SPAM SEO Tactics
Content Automation
Doorway Pages
Hidden Text or Links
Keyword Stuffing
Reporting a Competitor
Sneaky Redirects
Cloaking

32. Black Hat SPAM SEO Techniques
• Link Manipulation - Buying links, advertorials, and link schemes
• Article Spinning
• Link Schemes
• Link Farms
• Link Wheels
• Link Networks
• Rich Snippet Markup Spam
• Automated Queries to Google
• Creating pages, subdomains, or domains with duplicate content
• Pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing, viruses, trojans, and other
malware.

33. Black Hat SPAM SEO Techniques
• Link Manipulation - Buying links, advertorials, and link schemes
• Article Spinning
• Link Schemes
• Link Farms
• Link Wheels
• Link Networks
• Rich Snippet Markup Spam
• Automated Queries to Google
• Creating pages, subdomains, or domains with duplicate content
• Pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing, viruses, trojans, and other
malware.

34. https://moz.com/Go
To that end we have…
• Panda
• Penguin
• Pigeon
• Page Layout
• Phantom (unknown quality updates)
• Exact Match Domain
• “Fred” (Fred is not an algorithm just a general name for all changes starting in 2017)

35. https://moz.com/Go
AND…
Algos aimed at specific industries
• Pirate
• PayDay Loan

36. https://moz.com/Go
AND…
• User Experience Updates
• Mobilegeddon
• Mobile First
Plus added to the main algorithm
• Page Speed

39. You
need….

41. WhiteHatSEO is about
Measuring the Site
Against Google’s Guidelines
& Their Algorithms
And IMPROVING
NOT GAMING

42. So where do we start?

43. We call these ranking factors

44. http://searchengineland.com/faq-all-about-the-new-Google-rankbrain-algorithm-234440

45. WhiteHat is a mix of
- Technical SEO
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO (not links)
- Off-Page SEO (links)

46. Winning =
Doing more than your competitor

47. Quality

48. Main Algorithm Highlights
Google Quality Raters

49. Quality – What Makes a Quality Site?

50. Quality Raters Guide
http://www.thesempost.com/updated-google-quality-rater-guidelines-eat/

51. Content + Links
Top Two Ranking Factors

52. Content
Focus on E-A-T
Expertise, Authority, and Trust

53. Content
•Content Clarity
•Content Specificity
•Content Length
•Blogs 350-550
•Articles 750-950+
•ESPECIALLY for sites that deal with
news, information, or education
Note: Freshness does not matter for all sites.

54. YMYL – Your Money Or Your Life

55. YMYL – Your Money Or Your Life
http://www.thesempost.com/updated-google-quality-rater-guidelines-eat/

56. Technical

58. Technical
And when you identify and fix the issues you get …

59. So what are we looking at?

60. •Http vs. Https
•Robots
•Sitemaps
•Canonicals
•Redirects & 404s
•Architecture
•Navigation
•Schema Tagging
Technical

61. What else?

62. Speed

63. Speed….
You know fast….
Like really fast…

64. Two Tests
WebpageTest.org
and of course
Google Pagespeed Insights

67. And Google….

68. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=whitehouse.gov
You want an 85 min – 90+ is best

69. Algorithms

70. Panda

71. Panda

72. Panda
Panda focuses on content quality.

73. Panda
Panda focuses on content quality.
• Quality Content
• Meet the EAT standard
• No “thin” Content
• Content Length does matter
• Exceptions do exist
• Be careful of Duplicate Content
• Make sure you have proper canonicals
• Make sure your titles/descriptions are unique

74. Panda
KEEP in MIND
Panda Rollouts cannot be accurately
determined after 4th Quarter 2015!
(Rolled into the main algos- still rolling!)
Rollout every few months, not announced.

75. Phantom (or Fred)

77. Phantom
Organic Quality Update (Phantom)
Like Panda Lite with a Few More Focuses
Rollout: Late August (31st) thru early September.
Summary: Google update that affected sites with low quality indicators.
Focus: Low Quality Pages
Top Takeaways.
• Not Confirmed by Google
• Organic SERPs
Quality Update Issues (most likely Phantom)
• Appeared to focus on items such as
• Aggressive Ad Placements
• Content Rendering
• Deception (ads, affiliate links, etc.)
• Thin Content

78. Penguin

79. Penguin

80. Penguin

81. Penguin 2.0-3.x
was angry!

82. Penguin

83. Penguin
Penguin 4.0 (Real-time)
Rollout: Approximately September 23, 2016 It also rolled out
in several phases completing these rollouts the second week
of October. If you have been waiting for a Penguin recovery, it
would have happened by now.
Summary: This update was the first in more than 2 years.
However, the new version of Penguin is very different from
the old in there is no whole site website demotion, just
granular links devaluation. In addition the links are being
evaluated in “real time” and so changes to link profiles will be
assessed quickly.

84. Phantom
Focus: Mostly links, but also other Web Spam Factors.
Top Takeaways.
• Confirmed by Google
• Updates are in “real time”
(not the instant they occur, but they are assessed
rapidly)
Sites are no longer demoted in search, links are devalued.
Links are devalued? This means their value (passed Page
Rank) to the site is removed from the site’s scoring.
In the past, the entire site was demoted in the SERPs.
This is no longer the case.

85. Penguin
Devaluations are much more granular
• Query Set
• Page Level
• Section Level
This makes them harder to detect as their will be a
slower decline in smaller sections of the site

86. Penguin
Cliff vs. Slope

87. Penguin
Devaluations
Devaluations can also come from other sites.
If the sites that link to you have their links
devalued, then that link juice cannot be passed.

88. Penguin
According to Google.
No machine learning in Penguin, no AI.

89. Rank Brain

90. http://propecta.com/googles-rankbrain-and-the-future-of-seo

91. http://searchengineland.com/rankbrain-changes-entity-search-234345
People, Places, Things….. Strings to Things

92. This is
Rank Brain

93. • Google is confused
• Eat Google
• What does this mean?
Google does NOT have
Natural Language
Processing

95. Rank Brain Uses Users Clicks
to Help It Understand Query Intent.

96. Rank Brain
Uses Entities & Known Relationships
Person, Place, Thing = Noun = Entities.
Nouns or Persons/Places/People/Things are what we
call entities. Entities are known to Google and their
meaning is defined in the databases Google
references.

97. Rank Brain
Uses Entities & Known Relationships
There is no optimizing for Rank Brain and why would
you want to?
Rank Brain Queries = Query (User) Intent to SERPs =
weak association. Bringing irrelevant traffic.
But you can help prevent your site from getting picked
up in Rank Brain, look at Google Suggest.

98. Rank Brain
Google Suggest =
Best Keyword Tool
you have.

99. Query Set =
Google Eat

100. Query Set = Google Eat

101. Query Set
= Google
Eat

102. Query Set
= Google
Eat

103. Mobile

104. Mobile First Indexing

105. Mobile First Indexing

106. Mobile First Indexing

107. Mobile First Indexing
Mobile First Indexing
• One Index
• Mobile Crawler will be used for all sites
• Mobile Content will be used for ranking
• Mobile SERPs
• Desktop SERPs
• AMP NOT a factor in mobile first indexing
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html
Kristine Schachinger @schachin

108. Mobile First Indexing
• Content you want to rank for MUST be in
your mobile site
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html
Kristine Schachinger @schachin

109. Mobile First Indexing
If you do not have the content on your
mobile site, the site cannot be found for it
even in desktop.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html
Kristine Schachinger @schachin

111. Mobile First Indexing
Mobile First Indexing
• If you have a mobile m. site
• Make sure to verify this site in Google Search console
• If you have a responsive site
• No changes needed
• If you have AMP only
• You will be evaluated on your desktop content, but mobile
friendly boost
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html
http://www.thesempost.com/details-googles-mobile-first-indexing-change/
Kristine Schachinger @schachin

112. Mobile First Indexing
UI Hidden Content.
Unlike Desktop, content hidden in accordions
and tabs will not be devalued in mobile first
indexing.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html
http://www.thesempost.com/details-googles-mobile-first-indexing-change/
Kristine Schachinger @schachin

113. Mobile First Indexing
Schema.
If you have removed schema in mobile, it must
be added back to get into the snippets
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html
http://www.thesempost.com/details-googles-mobile-first-indexing-change/
Kristine Schachinger @schachin

114. AMP
Kristine Schachinger @schachin
Ads & Interstitials
What is AMP?

115. AMP – What you need to know.
• Accelerated Mobile Pages
• AMP will always replace your Mobile Page
• AMP rankings are based on your site value
• There are no boosts for AMP EXCEPT where a
carousel exists
• AMP does not work for all sites now, but you
can follow progress https://www.ampproject.org/
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html
Kristine Schachinger @schachin

117. Kristine Schachinger | Twitter @schachin
Kristine@SitesWithoutWalls.com
SEO, Google, and You in 2017