Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz
| @randfish | rand@moz.com What Startup Execs Need to Know About SEO in 2017

Slides online at
bit.ly/execseo2017

Google Dominates Online
Traffic Referrals#1

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

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

Rankings Are Determined By a
Few, Broad Areas of Input #2

The 8 BroadAreas of Google’s
RankingAlgorithm (forclassic,ten-blue-links styleresults): 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

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

Ranking in Classic Results May
No Longer Be Enough to Win #3

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 results are the “classic ten blue links” kind

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).

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…

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
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

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

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)

SEO Doesn’t Work For Every
Organization#4

Some products don’t have enough
explicit search volume:

Some find the SEO results
too competitive to be worthwhile:

Some have chosen not to
build the strength required in content creation/marketing (for a variety of reasons):

Should Your Company Invest in
Making SEO a Core Competency? Opportunity (search volume) Opportunity Cost (other channels) Passion & Interest Cost of Acquisition vs. Lifetime Value

My Best Advice for Building
SEO Into Your Company’s Marketing #5

Contract First, Then Hire Via
Moz’s Recommended List

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

Focus on Your Marketing Flywheel,
Not on Finding an Elusive Growth Hack

Moz’s Flywheel KW Research +
Industry Intuition Publish Content Promote via Social Channels Push to email + RSS subscribers Earn Links + Amplification Grow social, email, RSS, & WoM channels Grow Domain Authority Earn Search & Referral Traffic Rank for More Competitive KWs

KW Research + Industry Intuition
Publish Content Promote via Social Channels Push to email + RSS subscribers Earn Links + Amplification Grow social, email, RSS, & WoM channels Grow Domain Authority Earn Search & Referral Traffic Rank for More Competitive KWs In 2006, I was lucky if new content led to any links or rankings at all

KW Research + Industry Intuition
Publish Content Promote via Social Channels Push to email + RSS subscribers Earn Links + Amplification Grow social, email, RSS, & WoM channels Grow Domain Authority Earn Search & Referral Traffic Rank for More Competitive KWs But, by 2017, nearly every post earns a handful of links, & some earn a lot!

Moz is a Business Built
on Content

Dollar Shave Club was Built
on a Press & Media Flywheel Via NYTimes

Dribbble was Built on a
UGC/Community Flywheel

But… Almost Every Flywheel Finds
a Point (or Points) of Friction Publish Content Promote via Social Channels Push to email + RSS subscribers Crap… We’re not reaching anyone who will link/amplify us 

This is a Good Time
for a GROWTH HACK!

Hacks aren’t necessarily evil, spammy,
or without value. They can be useful when applied to a sound marketing strategy.

Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz
| @randfish | rand@moz.com Bit.ly/execseo2017