Mozcation Barcelona presentation from Rand on the evolution of SEO and emerging opportunities.

1. Emerging SEO Opportunities
Download at http://bit.ly/mozbarcelona
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz | September 2011

2. makes SOFTWARE!!
We don’t offer any consulting.

3. Search + Social on the Web

4. Search
Currently, there are more
than 3 billion searches/day
on Google
Data via Google’s occasional public statements and some inference (for 2006 + 2009)

5. Social
Social is rising fast, but
search is solidly in the lead.
Via http://searchengineland.com/top-internet-activities-search-email-once-again-
88964

6. Evolution of Google’s Results

7. Google SERPs 1997-2007

8. Google SERPs Today

9. Google SERPs Today

11. New & Exciting Opportunities
in the Search Results

12. Local/Maps Results

13. Videos

14. Social Annotations in the SERPs

15. How Can SEOs Take Advantage of
This Evolution in Search?

16. Local/Maps Results

17. A Completely Different Algorithm
Classic Links + Anchor
Text Probably Won’t Help
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html

18. A Completely Different Algorithm
Higher CTR Here
Lower CTR Here

19. Eye-Tracking Shows Location Matters
Everyone’s Eyes
Went Here
Via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps

20. Business Registration Required
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter?hl=es will get you added

21. Consistency of Citations is Critical
The listings (name + address
text) across different
websites are interpreted by
Google as local “citations”
The citations in local results are like links in the classic rankings – they help Places
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
listings to rank higher.

22. Discovering Listing Sources for Places:
Grab 2 or more of these results
and search for them together.
More good ways to do this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-research-local-citations-
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
after-google-removed-them-from-places

23. Discovering Listing Sources for Places:
These websites are likely
listing sources because they
show 2+ of the top results.
More good ways to do this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-research-local-citations-
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
after-google-removed-them-from-places

24. For Reviews, Quantity > Quality
Number of reviews
usually helps rankings
more than star rating!
For full details, check out http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml -
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
the industry’s best resource on the topic.

25. Video XML Sitemaps &
Video Results

26. The “Long Tail” of Video Sites
Long tail of video
sites get 50% of all
online video
traffic/views!
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/08/long-tail-video-half-viewing-minutes/

27. Google’s Video Results Get High CTR
Sometimes, #3 can get
more clicks than #1!
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html

28. Any Page with an Embedded Video Can Rank
Self Hosted
YouTube Hosted
Embed from TED!
The video doesn’t need to be self-hosted, either. It’s fine to simply have a video on the
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
page (except YouTube) and still get the video snippet.

29. Don’t Use YouTube
None of these come from YouTube, but from independent, non-video specific sites
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
where a video has been embedded.

30. Video XML Sitemaps are Key
Google provides good information on how to do this here:
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472

31. Wistia is My Favorite Video Host
http://www.wistia.com will let you point the embed of the video back to your own
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
page, creates video XML sitemaps for you and provides awesome statistics.

32. Social Annotations & Social Ranking
Boosts in the SERPs

33. Rel=Author
I’m guessing this gives a substantially
higher click-through rate, too.
Yoast has a great piece for those using Wordpress here: http://yoast.com/wordpress-rel-
author-rel-me/ and this one’s good too: http://anthonyvbrunetti.com/marketing/google-rel-
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
author-infographic-how-to-implement/

34. These are results from Google’s “social” search tool (using the parameter in the lower
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
left-hand corner in red). You must be logged into a Google+ enabled account to get this.

35. Social Annotations from Your Network
in “Regular” Search Results
As http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
great as http://www.everywhereist.com is, it doesn’t rank page one for this query unless
I’m logged in and following Geraldine on Twitter.

36. Grow Your Social Network to Reach Searchers
Geraldine’s blog is
awesome, but it would
never rank on page #1
for this query without
the power of the social
connection.
Check out http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/merging-of-search-social-wappow for more on how
search engines and social media are mixing together.

37. The social connections
appear to influence
rank ordering.
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
These annotations undoubtedly increase CTR, particularly if the source is trusted.

38. Hang on a tic... How did they
know I’m connected to
Kalena on Facebook?! I
haven’t yet added Facebook
to my Google account!
When Google starts using latent (rather than active) network connections, social
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
becomes even more powerful.

39. Google Has Deep Social Network Spidering
Notice that Google crawls
through one network to
discover connections 2-3
“hops” away on another.
Read more here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/social-annotations-in-search-now-your-social-network-rankings and
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
see your socially connected data via http://www.google.com/s2/search/social?hl=en#socialcontent

40. Google+ is Becoming Google’s Primary Social
Connector in Search Results
This, sadly, means that, at least for now, mentioning someone on Plus won’t get their
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
attention the way it can on Twitter

41. +1s in Non-Personalized SERPs, Too
Hello Social Proof!
These +1 counts only seem to show when a page has 500 or more +1s. More -
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
http://searchengineland.com/confirmed-google-showing-1-counts-to-logged-out-users-82800

42. There are a Lot of Social Networks at Scale
Users: 25mm 750mm 200mm 120mm 10mm
Users: 14mm Millions 14mm 6.5mm

43. Social May Not Help Directly
We drove more than 300 tweets to the URL http://www.xconomy.com/san-
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
francisco/2011/05/17/hunting-hippos-optimizelys-testing-tools-bring-data-driven-web-design-to-the-
masses/ but the rankings actually went down 

44. But it Brings in Lots of Links +
Visibility if You Grow Your Network
That’s literally the only promotion I did for the blog post, and 2 months later, it ranks
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
#2 for the highly competitive phrase “VC funding.”

45. Search is Bigger than Classic SEO
(and the responsibilities of SEOs have been upgraded)

46. Q+A
Download at http://bit.ly/mozbarcelona
You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!
Rand on the Web http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial
• Twitter: @randfish
• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog
• Email: rand@seomoz.org