 happy to be back. I'm so happy to see people face to face. I'm so happy to be part of this community and to be able to teach. It's an honor and a pleasure. I'm gonna give you some ideas and things that I've been thinking about the last few years especially. Trends I've been watching for a very long time. I'm sort of weirdly a collector of screenshots of search results pages and I want to show you some of those now because my thesis here is sort of that the biggest trend in SEO has nothing to do with rankings. It really has nothing to do with rankings. The phrases and pages that I rank for are things that sometimes are durable for many years but what does change a lot what's changing every day if you watch Mozcast we see changing every day is the features what appears in search the experience of the searcher. Here's an example of a screenshot 10 blue links remember that 10 blue links this was just in 2019 2019 later that year people also ask climbing to the top later that 2020 wow it's changed quite a bit here come some images popping up images moving up higher people also asked for the top yeah you'd only see this if you were a nerd like me who collects screenshots of search results pages all the time whoa what wait what where the links where the pages what's ranking and then before you know it right it's the number one ranked page number two number three pushed farther and farther down basically the visual prominence here comes the video the visual prominence of traditional organic rankings is going down right the biggest trend in SEO is really much more about click-through rate than about rankings that's my thesis that's the point I'm making if you watch Mozcast you'll see they actually track you can see the years in which these search results page features appeared the percentage in which search results pages they appear and now people also ask last I checked it's actually higher than that it's like more than 90% started in 2017 now 90% of search results pages have people also ask really really interesting so I'm gonna put them side-by-side for you here now ever seen this imagine this 2016 2022 you search for modern wedding dress what appears you used to be number one was only 240 pixels from the top of the of the viewport right now it's 500 pixels down it's below the fold and the number of images talk about how much more visual search results pages have gotten it used to be 12 pictures now you can see 54 it's like a bridal magazine what is going on we need to adapt we need to look closely at search results pages because you are not really researching key phrase and coming up with strategy unless you've looked very closely at the SERP itself okay this is also kind of interesting I'm gonna put them side-by-side now these reports literally show my ranking tracked over time in Moz my click-through rate for that page over that same duration I've got the red lines lined up you can see it page by page and then the traffic look at that imagine have you seen this before have you ever tracked them ever seen them together the ranking basically holds steady click-through rate drops from 25 to 10 percent and traffic goes from 400 a week to less than 100 per week this is the reality this is modern SEO this is the situation that we're in and this is the big big trend right ranking don't rankings don't change as much as you might think but the search but the click-through rate because of search results page features changes a whole bunch therefore the number one key phrase a tool in the universe to me is Google itself we must look very closely at search results pages before even deciding what strategy to employ so I'm gonna go through with you now some different strategies that you might conclude make sense for various search results pages every key phrase is a competition and different types of assets are different competitors every key phrase is a totally different competition videos again massive changes in how search results the features in the SERP 2013 card tricks that's what it looked like in 2013 2022 whoa big carousel it looks totally different you can see the evolution of this carousel from 2018 2020 later in 2020 and then 20 November it's they stack them up makes perfect sense Google very smart you can scale it now you can you can dominate the page with videos until we get to just one year ago you see key moments 10 different images just inside that little carousel big change so you're considering targeting a key phrase I'm gonna build up I'm gonna create a piece of content my audience keeps asking for it and you really need this thing it's like how to share access to Google analytics let's make this page I need this page I'm gonna make this page I'm gonna write this article I'm useful for my clients right I need this thing how should I target that key phrase I don't know until I have looked closely at the search results page I saw those videos I need to make a video conclusion that's the competition there's the battlefield I can see it I need to make a video therefore make the article and make the video so now the article ranks I'm not outranking Google it's very hard to outrank Google for a Google related phrase in Google.com that's a lot of competing with Google itself but I'm number 200 Google to the article ranks in the video ranks there you see my strategy changed depending on what I saw in the search results page you've not researched a key phrase need a flexible strategy so then it's not just about making the video but what else am I doing here I'm trying to make the video stand out look at the color the views from that the view the content itself performed pretty well it's got that's you can see it's got some amount of traffic but I'm not just looking for traffic I'm looking for visibility here's the analytics from YouTube studio you can see the visibility for the video it's not rankings it's about visibility it's not traffic that's not traffic right that's that's that's a visibility and another platform so to get make that happen though I need to have a high click-through rate on my actual video which means I have to have a YouTube custom thumbnail that draws attention and has high visual prominence right we just saw how Google's filling search results pages with video with images I need my image to compete well in that context how do I do that I need to make a custom thumbnail that simple looks good at 140 pixels wide it's pretty dinky I need to make a headline give them a reason to click embed the benefit into the video thumbnail itself the face will of course grab attention faces are always visually prominent ever do an eye tracking study you'll see that's true and then a color a bright contrasting color I need to make a high click-through rate video thumbnail is that SEO yes it is today that's my job I'm an SEO and today my job is to make a high click-through rate video thumbnail because my video is appearing in search results pages similarly images they're appearing all the time images I'm gonna do this one from the other direction I'm considering making a key phrase I'm a content marketer I'm an analytics guy I'm measuring the performance of content I'm gonna write an article can I align with a key phrase content marketing performance I don't think that's gonna work out for me I think that's a bit out of reach I think I need to consider another key phrase let's keep looking how can I find another key phrase Google was Google suggest that's interesting matrix wow Google seems to think that people want a content performance matrix they can you do adapt my content for that is that a key phrase ah that's within reach I think you're out of shot at this I'm gonna go for it but what is the search results page for that phrase look like I am not done researching the key phrase to have closely analyzed the battlefield stand above the battlefield take a look what kind of competitor is gonna work in this context okay so now I can see what's actually ranking for that time out for a second here's the worst the world's least useful search results page feature half of you consider half a billion pages and you showed me these in half a second has anyone ever used that for anything is it just me why do they keep showing us that what's the point Google come on nobody asked you dude I don't need to know how fast you gave me that search result okay just a side rant I'm gonna set that aside I think it's weird I just think it's weird they keep showing us that who uses anyone use that what no okay that total tangent moving itself moving along okay images are appearing because it's a matrix related phrase this video this visitor wants a diagram okay so then what am I gonna do I'm gonna make a diagram what's my diagram gonna look like well it's got visual interest it's like Larry Kim right everything you publish is either a donkey or a unicorn everything you publish gets good or bad results in traffic everything you publish it's good about results in engagement everything is either good or bad cheese good or bass mouse trap you know you gotta you know your your content performs in different ways so I make this little two by two grid very useful I recommend it take a look at that it's gonna help you how does it work well it's got a keyword focus file name and title it's gotta it's visually interesting it's practical it's colorful I put the watermark I'm trying to do a little branding publish this little guy boom there you go there you go I looked at the search results page before deciding how to attack this key phrase and then adapted my strategy based on that okay there's not one Google anymore it's not one thing it's not just about rankings it's not just about traffic it's about visibility it's about visibility so I know that mass shows this and I love seeing that I think that's interesting but that's not the only game right the organic click the rate you can just watch that number fall over year after year but we have to it that's that we're not limited to that organic click-through rate it's more than just traditional organic search okay directories key phrase that's near and dear to me Chicago web design I need to rank for this phrase right that's most my audience is doing I need to opt here's another way to think about it I'm just not optimizing content for search I'm optimizing for the searcher's experience see the searcher searches for this phrase they see what they click on what there's a directory that ranks number one now my game right is this SEO today yes it is yes it is my job today as an SEO is to appear within this directory to appear within that directory in this case the directory is a combination of it's like a paid thing combined with reviews or something I've got to figure that out I've got to become visible there is that worth it absolutely I can see an analytics I can just look at the referral traffic from that directory I can see if it's generating leads I can evaluate whether or not that that directory submission or promotion or sponsorship is worth the money right so is that traffic is that visibility what am I doing that's SEO today that's SEO directory submissions why do directories rank so high it's because they satisfy that for the visitor's intent so well what is the intent to the visitor who searches for that phrase it's to consider for many different options right if you put this one into Mars you're going to look and you're going to say weird that page doesn't have the highest page authority weird that page doesn't have the high the best relevance the highest content score why would it rank so high the reason is user interaction signals it's solving for the visitor's intent the visitor who searches for that phrase and lands on that page is very satisfied they're very happy right because it's long the long click dwell time think about it visitor searches visitor see search results page visitor clicks visitor lands visitor vomits and hits the back button low dwell time poor user interaction signals not a not a not a great page visitor scrolls down visitor clicks again visitor spends five long minutes on that page loves it and then hits the back button those are both bounces but one of those bounces has a much better user interaction signal for the search engine one of those bounces is sending high dwell time right this is a this is a signal for Google that it's a useful page which is why that helps explain why directories perform so well even when the other traditional expected ranking factors are not that strong think about this this is there's a lot on this tiny slide I want you to try to enter this this is important I think Google favors directories over service providers that's why Google favors merchants marketplace is over merchants that's why so what is your job as an SEO it's to play in that game because you're not just optimizing for the key phrase for the page you're not just you know improving the relevance of a piece of content you're optimizing for the experience of the searcher from where they start there's a true story in the life of every person on every webpage where did they start what are they looking for what do they land on that's the game you're good you have to play today sir past big blogs there's some key phrases this was a conversation with Hannah from last night she said yes we just talked about this right you were telling me about this key phrase vacuum cleaner company want to rank for best vacuum cleaner what ranks for best vacuum cleaner there are no vacuum cleaner companies that rank for that there are only media sites that rank for that so you're an SEO what's your job today digital PR you have no other access to a visibility within this search results page for this critical key phrase right very valuable key phrase unless you're playing that game today that's why forever my strategy will include guest blogging pitching digital PR submission you get the idea okay another example visitor searches visitor sees a client true story client wants to rank for private dining Chicago private dining Chicago what ranks for private dining Chicago association Yelp blogs aggregators blogs there's not one restaurant that ranks for that key phrase so I'm looking at this closely with my client looking at it closely and what do we see hey that's a travel association hey we're part of that travel association what's my job as an SEO today is to look closely at that page the about the visitor's experience and in this case we need to call up that association and have them include us at the top there it is there's my client they appear at the top the results you get the idea is that SEO yes it is today that's my job as an SEO is to reach out to the association that my client's a member of and to tell them that we should be more visible than that other company that's not even a member you get the idea big big difference here's another one that I think of it's a giant shortcut it's a possible opportunity it depends but does this does the search results page include user generated content websites quora reddit stack overflow true story three years ago now it's sad it was so long three years ago 2019 I was standing on this stage there's a picture of me standing on this stage picture taken from under there I'm at a conference there's a ton of super smart people here I'm not leaving this place without making something I'm an opportunistic content marketer I'm on an interview I want to talk to some of the other speakers and get their feedback so I'm going to create a piece of content from my experience here by the way I recommend that all of you do this before you leave some of the best opportunities are going to have are actually sitting next to you in this room so I reached out to I started talking to them and I started interviewing people in that room right over there I held my laptop I had a lav mic hey Ross would you answer this question what do you love about content and search I asked each speaker three questions okay so one of the questions I asked was will SEO ever die do I have a chance to become visible for this phrase will SEO ever die is there an opportunity there do I have a chance at that what's ranking for that oh quora is ranking for that key phrase yes I do have an opportunity because of quora ranks for the key phrase if the quora question ranks for the key phrase and if my answer ranks for the quora question now I rank for the key phrase you see that shortcut it's like barnacle SEO you can do this my my answer ranks for the question the question ranks for the key phrase this by the way is something you can do from the other direction just put one of these user-generated content websites into a rank tracking tool and it will show you all the phrases that that site ranks for these are the questions that you should go answer on that website make sense I just reversed engineered a ton of visibility by seeing all the phrases for which quora ranks just just add up votes instant ranking instant visibility get the idea I went backwards I found all the phrases for which quora ranks and those are the questions on which I can be active okay this one here fascinating to me I pay a lot of attention to this I'm always trying to understand the intent of visitors by using google to see what appears in search results and sometimes it's a mix it's not clear it's a mix you search for lead generation web design google doesn't seem to know what this visitor wants does this visitor want an article does this visitor want a service provider it's ambiguous it's an ambiguous intent free phrase the SERP is clearly trying to answer both for commercial intent and for information intent it's kind of interesting right these if you clicked on these these pages would solve for various types of intent so how do we target ambiguous intent key phrase this is actually kind of the the key to search and the key to digital in general is that every everyone at every moment in their life has one of two types of intent you have commercial intent or information intent you search for either a dollar sign or a key for it or a question mark that's how I think of commercial information in commercial and information intent and you land on one of two types of pages a sales page or a or an article right this explains a ton about digital marketing everything that we make is either satisfying for one of these two types of intent there's two kinds of visitors with two kinds of intent searching for two kinds of key phrases landing on two kinds of pages and then converting in two different ways right so this page is a mix of dollar signs and question marks it's a mix of dollar signs and question marks so how do we target this phrase well if you're making a service page i it's not different algorithms it's still google i recommend including some of the people also ask questions answers to those things on your service page why not google seems to be thinking that that's questions this visitor might have another thing eat lilies right here let's put eat on that page right look at how well joanne does it right joanna weave from copy hackers beautiful right she's got three phases at the top of every article you can imagine how that just builds support how that adds credibility finally this is a i could make so much money for this is not a client any of us could make a ton of money for this client in about five minutes if you search for this chemical you might want the chemical chemical formula the structure but this company sells that chemical they're like the laboratory supply company but you can't tell from the title tag that they're actually selling the product if you just put the word buy at the beginning of that title tag the commercial intent visitor would immediately see that and click and land and they'd have you know help the commercial intent visitor filter out all of the information from commercial intent pages the easy opportunity so these are three ways that you can optimize for an ambiguous intent phrase on a sales page what about for the what about for the the article this is a page about recovery from amphetamine addiction this is like important page it's an article basically but one thing they did very very well is to make sure it was filled with calls to action make sure that you've write an article and that article is on a targeting ambiguous intent key phrase make sure that you've got lots of calls to action on it another obvious opportunity oh hold on there's a true story in the life of every visitor to every web page as I said this is a therapy website this is an adhd page what's the true story in the life of this visitor they've got a short attention span so let's give them 65 other things they might want to click on right that's a that's that's not a joke slide that's an actual website right it's like a I'm imagining a site for like a hypochondriac diseases you might also have like that'd be terrible what what are they thinking right think of it that way just always remember that there's a true story in the life of every visitor to every web page what do we know about that person well they clicked on this therefore we know that another thing middle of funnel content the content upgrade or lead magnet is an awesome thing to add to an ambiguous intent article right this is an article about solar the page about solar simulation that that button cranks it gets tons yeah there's tons of email addresses because the visitor who has ambiguous intent might be ready right that's where the middle of funnel content that's where the content upgrade you know the the gated piece works really really well then finally surround that article right you've got a chance right for other websites their their page their phrases you can search for where i wrote a lot of the articles in the search results page right there's no reason you can't write for other websites so these are my my tips for targeting ambiguous intent key phrase regardless of the type of of content you're creating it's one of the it's not discussed that much but i think it's really effective to just attack these things differently with whatever you're creating you can kind of borrow the best tricks from the other type of page and then by the way you're not done writing it if you just writing it and publishing it it's often insufficient if i'm serious about a key phrase here's one i've been tracking for years lead generation website i write that article every couple years i'm not done if you didn't if you're not ranking yet for a key phrase maybe it's because you only wrote it once if you're not ranking for a key phrase maybe it's because you only wrote it once look at the evolution of this page this is not it's not over yet it's called search engine optimization it's not a one-time thing we're supposed to be in there keep improving it right new content comes out all the time the durability of a search ranking is a function of how much new stuff comes out on that topic therefore if there's a lot of new stuff coming out your the relative value of yours is going to erode over time we must keep publishing keep improving you know and i and that that's a phrase i've worked very hard on for many years and i'm actually pretty happy with my number 10 ranking 10 million pixels down from the top of the page that's not too bad for that quite valuable phrase so seriously if if if you only wrote it once you're not a serious player in that game yet depending on the relative competition for the phrase by the way my advice i mentioned this once before my advice for this if once you realize that you're going to be updating your content later you you learn the value of of creating URLs that are easily adapted and recycled so never put a number in a url why would you if i rewrote that article later and it's now 15 breath practices is a mismatch between my url and the title right never put a format in a url why not because if i update that content later and change it into a different format there's a mismatch between the url and the format of my content urls should have no formats and no numbers use url you can make it anything you want right use urls that are easy to reuse later on optimizing for the for the searchers experience sometimes they search and they see a lot of stars it's like a constellation look at all the stars on this boom boom boom stars stars stars if this doesn't work out for this company by the way if this prevents people from clicking you're not going to see that anywhere that doesn't show up in your analytics that doesn't show up uh you're not going to see that in any any report reputation problems don't show up in any reports do they the person just doesn't click in fact what the person might do is actually and look these are really bad i tried to fuzz out the name i shouldn't be protecting these people who cares they must be bad at their it doesn't matter it's not a client so if this if this comes up a lot what does the visitor then do the refined search is a disaster they're looking for complaints this searcher is now looking for trouble how does that show up in your analytics just less traffic just there's no there's no report that shows that your your get you know that the click through rate for your navigational query went down who's watching no one's watching that so your job now is to improve the reputation i'm an seo is that my job today yes it is yes it is that's what search for me is today because that's what the visitor is seeing how do you do that first of all do a little soul searching let's read those let's get better let's do a better job uh at our you know at our service today also reach out get some super fans to write to a review you can use tools as tools for reputation management i'm not i'm an affiliate of nothing so i don't know what those tools are and by the way if you're gathering feedback as part of your normal job if you're trying to calculate your net promoter score then you would always have an opportunity to get better reviews because you're going to meet those people right in that moment at their peak interest right when they're super happy right so uh steal this if it's useful you're obviously getting all these slides this is a template that you can use after you've gotten good feedback to someone keep it in your good file right someone sends you a happy email you're an seo that's your next thought that's what i'm doing today this is my job today is to you is turn that happy clients feedback into a star review because that's going to appear in search results and that is part of the searcher's experience which is actually what i'm optimizing for it's more than just rankings it's about optimizing for the experience of the searcher last tip this is one that i think this is the type of analysis that you can only do in google there is no way to do this that i know of outside of google so if you created a page this is a client they created a page for this topic it is uh this is a i'm looking at the phrases this is not a client this is a this is a list of phrases for which this company ranks for it includes this phrase medical fitness management okay medical fitness management and uh but what about fitness center management is that a different key phrase or is that the same key phrase this is a simple shortcut i do this all the time i'm not sure if other people do it all the time and i'm not sure that i've ever seen taught as such but the but the question here is is that one key phrase or two if it's one key phrase then we should be incorporating the semantic sco were the semantically related phrases you know the the subtopics the related questions on the same page because it's one key phrase if it's two key phrases we should have two competitors every key phrases competition every page is a competitor we should have two pages targeting these two different key phrases so how do you know that it's a little tiny screencast video i'm just going to search for medical fitness management i'm going to see what ranks do they rank this this company actually ranks for that i'm scrolling down i'm looking at the SERP features i'm imagine what the click-through rate is there it is so now i'm going to do in another browser side by side scooch them over i can see them together i'm going to search for the other key phrase what was it like fitness center management this is the only way when you appear in a search result this is your method for trying to understand if this is a second key phrase do are there different listings different rankings different SERP features does one have video if is there any overlap if there's no overlap you found an opportunity you can target that that phrase you can make a page or a video or submit somewhere to target that key phrase that is the game there is no way to do that kind of analysis unless you are in google.com again google is the ultimate keyword research tool you have not finished researching a key phrase unless you've done the search looked closely at the SERP analyzed what ranks see what the opportunities are and then go fought that battle on those terms right by the way they this is a great use for google trends is to put in two different key phrases and see there i think google trends is sort of worthless for what single phrase you get it's meant it's best when used to evaluate multiple phrases so you can kind of tell and that's a phrase for which they have competition or of course they have a fighting chance so bottom line i used to be an seo who cared a lot about rankings 20 years right i did seo when it was altavista and exciting like us in hotpot those were weird times but i i used to care a lot about rankings and i still do right but it's but then i realized it's not just about rankings click through it's a factor it's actually also about traffic like ranking is not anything unless there's a click through rate because then any traffic but then finally come to realize it's not really just about traffic either it's about visibility not all not all it's think of it this way not all visibility is ranking and not all ranking is visibility your job as an seo is to become is to make the brand visible is to make the content visible is to help the company become increase awareness right for that brand even if that awareness does not create traffic on your domain and by the way ranking on your domain doesn't necessarily create visibility at all eventually we come to conclude right that you can actually rank super high for a key phrase but ranking number one is 1800 pixels from the top of the viewport and the click through rate is is closed to zero okay guys that's what i had for you i am really excited for all of you here you are at one of the great events in our industry this is a beautiful beautiful town and it's a it's such a so much love in this in this place with these people and again i highly recommend that you don't miss this opportunity to make stuff with each other make stuff with each other that's the beauty of the event right it's to come together and make new friends keep in touch and then collaborate on stuff right right for each other you contribute your quotes from each other make videos together guys this is the community feel the love work together make something that's why marketing is fun right let's go do great stuff okay thanks again mas Khan love you all i hope this is helpful have a great great show