The global events of the past two years have made it more important than ever for brands and agencies to stand out against the competition. Being able to call your company “award-winning” is one of the most powerful differentiators you can have.
Deadline alert: The final date to submit your Search Engine Land Awards entry is next Friday, September 3 at 11:59pm PST. Begin your application now!
Showcase exceptional work. The campaigns and initiatives you feature in your application will demonstrate to the judges, the community, and the industry at large just how talented you and your team are.
Generate new business. Customers and clients want to work with the best in the biz. And when you take home a Search Engine Land Award, that’s exactly what you’ll be.
Dazzle existing clients and customers. New work aside, your existing contacts will be thrilled to tell their circle they’re associated with an award-winning company.
Boost company morale. Winning a Search Engine Land Award is a wonderful way to put the spotlight on your hardworking colleagues and praise them for their tremendous work. You’ll ride those good vibes for years to come.
Earn international recognition. Search Engine Land Award winners — like Search Engine Land readers — come from all corners of the earth. When you win, you’ll be in the company of some of the world’s most exceptional organizations.
Savor legit bragging rights. New business is terrific. Industry praise is humbling. Bragging to friends, family, and your entire LinkedIn network is no less a well-deserved perk!
Wave from the front page of Search Engine Land. As a Search Engine Land Award winner, you’ll be featured in editorial coverage on Search Engine Land, the industry publication of record.
Enjoy potential speaking opportunities at Search Marketing Expo (SMX). Search Engine Land Award winners are often invited to speak at our sister conference, SMX — yet another opportunity to showcase your expertise and boost brand awareness.
Display a stunning trophy. Because, at the end of the day, who doesn’t love something beautiful and shiny to look at?
Take home the highest honor in search. The. Highest. Honor. In. Search. This is your field. This is your career. This is your chance. You deserve that honor.
There’s only one catch: You have to get your submission in by Friday, September 3 at 11:59pm PST. The submission process is faster and easier than ever before. What are you waiting for? Begin your application now.
Standard entry fees are $595 per application — and you can submit to as many categories as you like.
Our judges look forward to reviewing your work. Best of luck to you and your team!
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, over the past week, Google made a small change that impacted some of the clickable titles in the search result snippets, and some SEOs and marketers are having a hard time with the change.
For well over a decade Google has often not shown the title tag in your page’s metadata as the clickable link in the Google search results. But something changed last week with how and when Google shows the title tag versus headers or other content from the page or links. And with that change, it causes a lot of unrest amongst the SEO community.
Both Brodie Clark and Lily Ray covered this in a lot of detail, and I covered when this happened, which was on August 17, and how it is unrelated to passage-based ranking. But rest assured, Google has heard the feedback and is collecting examples of when these titles do not make sense. In fact, Danny Sullivan even said this might lead to more controls within Google Search Console for us to manage our titles in the Google search results better. Who knows if that will end up happening? Andrew Charlton came out with a nice tool to show you how Google is changing your title tags – just keep in mind, a lot of the title tag changes are query dependent.
My advice: This doesn’t seem to be a huge change. We have already seen Google not use our title tags before and as SEOs, we are awesome at dealing with change. We will adapt and use this to our advantage going forward.
Barry Schwartz, My title changes a lot
Google Shopping bug leads to large impression drops
Google Ads seemed to have a bug last Friday with Google Shopping in some regions, like the UK, where the shopping listings were not showing up. Some advertisers were claiming drops in their listings from showing up by over 90%, yes, 90% impression drops for Google Shopping campaigns.
Impressions and spend have dropped in Smart Shopping for many UK advertisers starting around August 20, 2021. “A high proportion of UK-based advertisers have seen a drop in impressions, cost and revenue for their PLA campaigns since Friday 20th,” tweeted PPCer Liam Wade. Google Ads Platinum Product Expert Emmanuel Flossie posted in the forums that it’s a known issue.
Why we care. “Assuming it gets fixed, bear in mind that bid strategies will likely be affected and may re-enter learning phases,” tweeted Wade in the initial thread. If your accounts or campaigns have been affected by this issue, it’s critical to communicate to clients and stakeholders that this change is a glitch in their metrics, and not indicative of other issues. It’d also be beneficial to annotate this change in Google Analytics so any KPIs can be caveated in future reports. The bug is also causing advertisers to question the machine learning and automation happening behind the scenes in ads. Please note, this was fixed on Tuesday late afternoon, so all should be good now.
Google link spam update is finally done rolling out
A full month after Google initially started to roll out the link spam update, the company has finally confirmed the update is complete. Google initially said this update would take only two-weeks. Now a full-month after it was announced, Google’s Danny Sullivan said via the Search Liaison account “the link spam update is now complete.”
Why we care. This might be a hard one to pinpoint for you or your clients, since it took a month to fully roll out. But if you see any changes to your rankings, maybe in a big way, over the last month, it might be related to this new link spam update. Make sure your links are natural and in accordance with Google’s webmaster guidelines. Work on improving your site, so it can naturally attract new links over time.
Google Ads rolling out a new campaign setup screen
Google Ads is rolling out a new ads campaign set up screen that has the steps to set up your campaigns across the left-hand rail of the screen, as opposed to the top of the screen. This seems to be broadly rolling out now and may surprise some advertisers who have been accustomed to the older version of this screen.
Some advertisers, as you can imagine, are not a fan of this change. It made a lot of industry vets do a double-take and it slowed down their process of setting up new campaigns in Google Ads. We do suspect that advertisers will adapt quickly to this new screen, as time goes on.
Why we care. Don’t be surprised when you see this new Google Ads campaign set up screen. You may have the same reaction as many of your colleagues where it takes you longer to set up the campaigns now because you are not accustomed to where things have moved. But you will quickly learn the change and be able to crank out new campaigns in no time.
Google AdSense new auto-optimize options
Google AdSense has added three new settings to auto-optimize features in your experiments. These new methods include select traffic, block a style and block an experiment.
Select traffic: Select the percentage of users that you want to show optimization experiments to.
Block a style: Remove an ad style that you don’t want auto-optimize experiments to run on. (AdSense for search only)
Block an experiment: Remove types of optimization experiments that you don’t want on your site, for example:
Vignette ads and anchor ads (AdSense for content)
Standard templates, shopping templates, and search keywords (AdSense for search).
Why we care. Publishers, it is probably worth testing some of these new auto-optimize options for your Google AdSense ads and see if they make an impact on your earnings. You can learn more on how to set these up over here.
Custom metrics in Google Ads, did COVID change SEO, and Crunchbase gets crunched
Google Ads custom metrics. Google has announced the addition of four new metrics, these metrics include Search impression share, Click impression share, Display impression share and all phone call metrics.
Poll: Did COVID change SEO? J. Turnbull asked on Twitter, “did COVID change how we do SEO?” 52.5% said no, COVID did not change how we do SEO. 216% said yes, COVID did change how we do SEO. And 22% said, “it depends.”
Google has completed the rollout of the link spam update it started just over four weeks ago. “The link spam update is now complete,” Danny Sullivan said via the Google Search Liaison account.
What took so long. Google originally said this update would “roll out across the next two weeks.” But as you can see, it took an additional two weeks to complete – a total of four weeks. Why did it take so long? Google did not say, but I suspect things got stuck a bit and the rollout hit some unexpected snags.
The original announcement. “In our continued efforts to improve the quality of the search results, we’re launching a new link spam-fighting change today — which we call the ‘link spam update.’ This algorithm update, which will roll out across the next two weeks, is even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam more broadly, across multiple languages. Sites taking part in link spam will see changes in Search as those links are re-assessed by our algorithms,” Google wrote.
Nullifying link spam. You can see the word Google used here was “nullifying,” which does not necessarily mean “penalize,” but instead, to ignore or simply not count. Google’s efforts around link spam have been to ignore and not count spammy links since Penguin 4.0 was released in 2016.
Why we care. This might be a hard one to pinpoint for you or your clients since it took a month to fully roll out. But if you see any changes to your rankings, maybe in a big way, over the last month, it might be related to this new link spam update. Make sure your links are natural and in accordance with Google’s webmaster guidelines. Work on improving your site, so it can naturally attract new links over time.
As Google wrote, “Site owners should make sure that they are following the best practices on links, both incoming and outgoing. Focusing on producing high-quality content and improving user experience always wins out compared to manipulating links. Promote awareness of your site using appropriately tagged links, and monetize it with properly tagged affiliate links.”
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, I was at a climbing gym last Friday when suddenly a semi-familiar tone sounded off all around me.
It was a severe weather notice for Hurricane Henri going off on everyone’s smartphones at the same time. I tapped on the notice and was taken to Google’s mobile SERP, where I was shown the SOS alert at the top, followed by the latest articles in the Top Stories carousel, a map of the storm’s expected path and links to local resources — a far more useful results page than the simple, nostalgic 10 blue links of days long gone.
Needs change and so do the nature of queries — it’s to be expected that the interface our audiences use to find what they’re looking for also evolves. I don’t expect any of you to be optimizing for storm warnings, but it’s always worth it to take a look at the experience offered on those results pages because, one day, they may make it onto a commerce-driven results page, for example.
George Nguyen, Editor
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Google said in the year 2020, it made 4,500 updates to Google Search. These changes can be ranking changes, user interface changes and much more. By comparison, in 2019, Google made 3,200 changes to Search. Looking further back, in 2010, we covered that Google had about one change per day.
Google also launched a “fully-redesigned How Search Works website that explains the ins and outs of Search.” In the 2021 version, it “updated the site with fresh information, made it easier to navigate and bookmark sections and added links to additional resources that share how Search works and answer common questions.”
Why we care. It is nice to see Google document how many changes it makes to Search from year to year. It is also good for search marketers to review how Google Search works and do a deep dive into the language Google uses to describe how the search engine functions.
The case for advertising on search engines other than Google
It can be easy to equate search marketing with Google marketing, because, well, statistically, it is. But it shouldn’t be. By focusing on Google above all else, we perpetuate a cycle that overlooks the value that smaller competitors might be offering and keeps the search behemoth at the top.
We can’t write off these smaller search engines’ failure to launch as evidence they were a worse product. That’s an oversimplification and it’s one we see Google and other near-monopolies use to justify their status as “natural” monopolies.
The dilemma is that search engines need revenue to grow, which comes, in most business models, from advertisers. And advertisers need users, which come with growth. It’s a chicken and egg situation. Which comes first: growth or advertisers? Who else can you consider for advertising:
Ecosia: An environmentally friendly, privacy-focused search engine that plants trees as you search.
Brave Search: Started as a browser and recently expanded into the search engine space.
Messy SEO Part 1: Navigating a site consolidation migration
Messy SEO is a new Search Engine Land column covering the nitty-gritty, unpolished tasks involved in the auditing, planning, and optimization of websites, using MarTech’s new domain as a case study.
“I recently joined the Third Door Media team to help clean up these issues arising from the consolidation of Marketing Land and MarTech Today. The new site needed someone to jump into the thick of things and chart a path forward,” writes Third Door Media’s new Content and SEO Manager.
Follow along as Corey sorts through the messy side of SEO and navigates the fixes needed to help this website migration achieve its goals.
The deal with title tags in Google Search, Bing Webmaster Tools adoption and the WFH schism
Get caught up on the title tag situation. For those wondering what the deal is with titles in Google Search, Brodie Clark has published an excellent explainer, complete with an FAQ section at the bottom.
Do you use Bing Webmaster Tools? Eli Schwartz posted a Twitter poll asking whether SEOs ever log into BWT. There are still two days left to participate, but when I last checked, a bit under half of respondents said, “Nope.”
“Why does everyone want to keep working from home?” “Return hesitancy is sparking friction as businesses figure out the new normal,” said Marketoonist creator Tom Fishburne.
The burden of sending our children back to school this year
“It’s enough to bring a parent to tears, except that every parent I know ran out a long time ago—I know I did,” Dan Sinker wrote for The Atlantic. “Ran out of tears, ran out of energy, ran out of patience. Through these grinding 18 months, we’ve managed our kids’ lives as best we could while abandoning our own. It was unsustainable then, it’s unsustainable now, and no matter what fresh hell this school year brings, it’ll still be unsustainable.”
The main point of Sinker’s article is encapsulated in the four-word title, “Parents Are Not Okay.” I’ve chosen to spotlight it today because, chances are, some of your colleagues are parents or you, yourself, are a parent and we are now in back-to-school season.
Sending our children back to school while COVID cases are rising, masking continues to be a battleground and a vaccine for children under 12 remains unavailable is a far cry from the improvements we were hoping for a year ago. Sinker describes it as a “monkey’s-paw situation, because, as a parent, all I’ve wanted for a year and a half is for my kids to go back to school—for their sake and for mine—but not like this.”
While we all like to view ourselves as professionals, there are things that are far more important than our jobs; in this case, the welfare of our children. These worries are likely to take a toll and businesses should recognize that, from practitioners all the way through to the C-suite. No one has ever had to do what parents in 2021 are doing, especially because, unlike last year, remote schooling seems to be off the table in so many regions.
“All this and parents are somehow expected to be okay,” Sinker wrote. Perhaps we can lighten the burden by acknowledging what parents around us are experiencing and maybe even find ways to support them where we can.
Dubai, UAE – June 21-24, 2021: Scene at Arab Health 2021 – the largest healthcare trade exhibition in the Middle East – held at Dubai World Trade Centre during the global Covid-19 pandemic.
A new wave of caution for in-person gatherings is sweeping over marketers as the COVID-19 Delta variant is causing cases to spike, especially in areas with lower vaccination rates.
Marketing professionals we surveyed this summer give it a 5 out of 10 chance, on average, that they will attend an in-person event through the end of 2021. The results showed a slight decrease in optimism compared to April, when respondents gave a 6 out of 10 chance, on average, that they would attend an in-person event in the fourth quarter of 2021.
About 30% of the nearly 170 marketers we surveyed in our latest Events Participation Index, said it was extremely unlikely (1 out of 10) that they would attend an in-person event this year. On the other hand, 20% said they were extremely likely (10 out of 10) to attend an in-person event this year.
This comes as several trade shows, conferences, and smaller regional shows are being planned for the remainder of 2021. It also follows an announcement by the New York Auto Show that it will not hold its 2021 event, despite optimism earlier this year that it could host tens of thousands of attendees in person.
The outlook improves slightly for 2022. Respondents on average gave it a 6 out of 10 likelihood that they would attend an in-person event in the first half of 2022. That jumped to 7 out of 10 for the second half of 2022.
All of this suggests that the kind of attendance seen in conferences, trade shows and more before the pandemic will not return in the near future.
Looking to 2022
Despite lingering concerns over safety, both attendees and exhibitors are budgeting to attend in-person events in 2022. But they plan to attend far fewer than before the pandemic.
About 78% of respondents said they are budgeted to attend a small number of in-person events in 2022, while only 12% said they were budgeted to attend many. We saw the same trend with exhibitors, which make up a smaller proportion of our respondents. Nearly 19% said they were budgeted to exhibit at a small number of in-person events next year, compared to 5% who expect to exhibit at many.
2022 attendance might also be limited by geography. While 56% of marketers said they would attend regional events that they could access through ground transportation or by driving, only 40% said they would fly long distances to attend.
Of course, willingness to attend an in-person conference depends on how safe attendees feel, so it is not surprising that 70% told us organizers should only allow vaccinated adults to attend.
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which could lead to more vaccine mandates across the US. New York City has already mandated proof of vaccination for visiting restaurants or gyms, and several major employers are also requiring staff to be vaccinated. The Consumer Technology Association’s upcoming CES 2022 event in January will also require proof of vaccination to attend.
Still, 30% of our respondents disagree with mandating vaccination, suggesting that organizers should expect mandates to be another limiting factor on attendance.
What hybrid means to attendees
Offering a digital component to a live event is not new. Conferences like SXSW, TechCrunch Disrupt and more had incorporated digital live streams into their events before the pandemic. But with the lockdown proving the value of virtual events, organizers are betting that hybrid events that pair in-person and digital experiences is the future. However, what attendees want from hybrid events is not so clear-cut.
About 32% of the marketers we surveyed said they would prefer a hybrid event where the in-person experience is smaller and more intimate paired with a large virtual experience. On the other hand, 25% said they would prefer a larger in-person event paired with a scaled-down virtual offering.
About 26% said the in-person and digital components of a hybrid event should be identical in scope while 17% said they saw no value in hybrid event experiences.
The virtue of hybrid during pandemic times is it gives organizers a chance to engage a larger audience that includes both in-person and virtual attendees. About 40% of the marketers we surveyed said they would attend an event in-person and access virtual components. About 22% said they would attend in-person only while 38% said they would attend the virtual components only.
Virtual to stay
Many of our respondents commented on how the past 18 months have changed their views on professional training and networking. For many of them, virtual events expanded their access to actionable information.
“It’s wonderful getting the benefit of top-notch presentations from the safety of my office. Going virtual has allowed vastly more people to ‘attend’ events and learn from the best,” wrote one respondent.
“While I love in-person events, I feel like I’ve attended more virtual events and training than I would have otherwise. It’s probably a combination of a reduced overall time commitment, and not having to pay for travel. I also feel like the level of training I’ve received hasn’t diminished from not being in-person,” wrote another.
But when it comes to networking, digital experiences miss the mark for many professionals, which is surprising in the age of social networking.
“I have not found virtual networking to be useful. It’s impossible to genuinely connect when there are so many participants, and the camaraderie that comes from being at a conference in person is totally gone. I don’t know what the magic ingredient is (mutual bonding over bad coffee and lack of sleep?) but online, networking interactions feel much more forced,” one marketer said.
Maybe this response sums it up perfectly.
“Virtual training is possible. Virtual networking … not so much.”
Messy SEO is a column covering the nitty-gritty, unpolished tasks involved in the auditing, planning, and optimization of websites, using MarTech’s new domain as a case study.
Walking into any new SEO project presents marketing strategists with unique challenges. Different website properties need solutions tailored to their specific issues. And with so many things to consider—branding, business goals, site setup, etc.—your project requires particular deliberation.
Search professionals have found themselves cleaning up issues following site consolidation migrations. This is the exact situation I walked into for the MarTech brand.
It was nothing short of what I call an “SEO mess,” or a collection of issues affecting search visibility in need of intricate solutions.
I recently joined the Third Door Media team to help clean up these issues arising from the consolidation of Marketing Land and MarTech Today. The new site needed someone to jump into the thick of things and chart a path forward. Here’s how the process unfolded:
Issues arising from site consolidation
Many organizations find their sites in need of heavy-duty clean-up after consolidation. But, unfortunately, they don’t always have time to undergo continual optimization and maintenance.
In MarTech’s case, the issues arose from a necessary business decision for the brand.
Rather than continuing to split their audience between the brands Marketing Land and MarTech Today, we chose to lean into MarTech. Using our resources to help marketers find their place in the new marketing landscape made sense.
Yet, significant website changes often come with significant issues, no matter how necessary the work. And there’s no one magic strategy to fix the mess. Instead, this situation requires a multifaceted, nitty-gritty solution.
The messy side of SEO
Before the site consolidation, the team took the content published on one platform and repurposed it for the other. For example, MarTech Today produced content for professionals researching marketing technology and automation, while Marketing Land focused on a broader marketing audience. Each would tailor their content pieces to their market, making slight changes where applicable.
The expected duplicate content issues arose following the consolidation, and the required fixes were far from a one-time fix.
The new site now has at least two versions of over 1,000 articles. What’s more, their copy is close enough to target the same topic and keywords. To solve this issue, we put together redirects from the content on Marketing Land to its counterpart on MarTech Today. Most of these contained the “-2” in their URL that WordPress adds to duplicate slugs.
The redirects were a needed short-term solution to prevent user experience and duplicate content issues. But with the new site being as large as it is, not all the redirects were set up, leaving many near-identical pieces waiting to be indexed.
Many other problems were also affecting the site, including many relevant non-indexed pages, broken links, mixed content, and site speed problems. However, we decided to tackle the duplicate pages first because they related to our site’s primary offering; marketing strategy, news, and insights. Fixing the problems affecting content visibility and quality is thus the priority.
Considerations and solutions
Working on these crucial issues after a site migration and consolidation isn’t glamorous by any means. However, when engaging with any messy optimization project, you need to ensure your expectations align with the likely outcomes.
The fact is, you won’t see the results of your efforts for some time. And that’s OK.
Google and other search engines need time to analyze the site for these changes, and we want them to be thorough. Fortunately, setting up the redirects directs visitors to the correct pages immediately, preventing UX problems until the consolidated pages are indexed and ranked.
Redirecting our focus
Because the content on each duplicate page in question is targeted toward separate audiences, there are a few factors to consider to determine what will appear on the consolidated page. These include the following:
How is the page performing?
How are people interacting with the page?
Which content is best suited for the target audience?
Using data available from Google Search Console and Analytics, I reviewed clicks, impressions, average page views and time spent on them, and a whole host of other valuable data. This data helped me answer considerations #1 and #2.
But, since the site has only been live since May, more data was required to determine which content aligned with MarTech’s audience interests.
Speaking with our talented writers and reviewing keyword data helped me determine which pieces of duplicated content were best suited for MarTech’s audience. It allowed me to begin the process of placing the best content on our new consolidated pages. And by redirecting the duplicated URLs, I’m able to point people and search engines to the most appropriate destination.
Wrapping up
That’s it for this first installment of “Messy SEO.” Next, we’ll continue to go through the steps taken toward cleaning up the mess post-site consolidation.
Have you worked on a site consolidation project for your business or clients? What tactics and tools did you use? Email me at cpatterson@thirddoormedia with the subject line Messy SEO Part 1 to let me know.
Google has updated the How Google Search Works website portal today and with that informed us that the search company made 4,500 “improvements” to search in 2020. “There have been 4,500 such improvements in 2020 alone,” the company said.
4,500 changes. Google said in the year 2020, Google made 4,500 updates to Google Search. These changes can be ranking changes, user interface changes and much more. By comparison, in 2019, Google made 3,200 changes to Google Search. Looking further back, in 2010, we covered that Google had about one change per day. Google said in 2019 it made about 350-400 changes in 2009.
Clearly, Google has expedited those changes over the years and is increasing the rate at which it updates Google Search.
Updated How Search Works site. Google also launched a “fully-redesigned How Search Works website that explains the ins and outs of Search.”
In 2013, Google first launched its How Search Works site with an explanatory infographic. The site has some pretty cool features, including showing examples of pages Google took down because of spam. Google took down that spam feature and relaunched the portal in 2016 with more details on how normal people want to know how Google Search Works.
Google said in the 2021 version it has “updated the site with fresh information, made it easier to navigate and bookmark sections and added links to additional resources that share how Search works and answer common questions.” “The website gives you a window into what happens from the moment you start typing in the search bar to the moment you get your search results. It gives an overview of the technology and work that goes into organizing the world’s information, understanding what you’re looking for and then connecting you with the most relevant, helpful information,” Google added.
Why we care. It is nice to see Google document how many changes it makes from year to year in Google Search. It is also good for search marketers to review how Google Search works and do a deep dive into the language Google uses to describe how the search engine functions. Dig into the new portal and let us know if you find anything exciting.
These days, there is a lot going on at the top of the SERP. New features, different configurations, variations for devices and challenges for specific verticals pop up every day. Seasoned SEOs will tell you that this is ‘not new’, but the pace of change can sometimes pose a challenge for clients and webmasters alike.
So how do you get ahead of the curve? How do you make your site better prepared for possible new SERP enhancements and make better use of what’s available now? I’ve outlined 4 potential strategies for SERP resilience in my session at SMX Advanced:
1. Prepare to share (more)
From Featured Snippets and Google for Jobs to Recipe Cards and Knowledge Graphs, Google is unceasing in its efforts to create more dynamic user-pleasing SERPs. This is great for users because Google can serve lighting fast results that are full of eye-catching information that is easy to navigate even on the smallest mobile screen. And with the range of search services available for a query – Google Lens, Google Maps, Google Shopping to name but a few – the granularity of Google’s ability to provide information at the most crucial point of need is immense.
For SEOs, this means that it’s becoming increasingly rare to rank exclusively in the top spot of a given query. Even without ads, and even with the Featured Snippet, the top results can often include a mix of links, videos, and/or images from different domains.
Have a look at this Featured Snippet for the query “What is a Featured Snippet”.
Here, the main paragraph and blue link come from Backlinko site, but there are four linked images in the carousel before you get to the text. And only two of them are from Backlinko’s page, the others are from pages ranking 9th and 2nd on the main SERP page. So, while some tools would report the paragraph snippet result as ranking “first”, from a user perspective the text result is the fifth clickable link.
And while this scenario is not new, it does illustrate something that we are seeing more regularly and in more complex configurations.
For instance, in the query for 50 Books to Read Before You Die, Google is serving a host of results ‘From sources across the web’ in an accordion. Then within each drop-down is a carousel of results that includes web pages and bookmarked YouTube videos.
That means that plain blue links aren’t visible until after a row of ads and then after 20+ links from the accordion carousel.
This presents both challenges and opportunities for SEOs.
Strategic challenges from mixed SERPs
For those who are looking to protect traffic, the challenge is to ensure that you are offering users a means of connecting with your content via multiple forms of media and mediums. Relying on a single content type (written blog without images for instance) could leave your traffic vulnerable to changes in the SERP. So, a strategic approach to your most important SERPs should include a mix of written, video and/or image content. This will ensure that you are optimized for how users are searching, as well as what they are searching for.
Strategic opportunities from mixed SERPs
For sites looking to gain traffic from established rivals, top SERPs with multiple site links present an opportunity to gain precious ground by optimizing for search services that your rivals are ignoring. So as well as looking for keyword gaps, make sure your content plan is looking for gaps in media formats.
Use a good technical SEO framework
In both cases, the multi-media content you develop should be underpinned by sound technical infrastructure, like a good CDN, image sitemaps for unique images, structured data, and well-formatted on-page SEO.
2. Invest in knowledge hubs
In Nov 2020 and Jan 2021, Google Tested Featured Snippet Contextual Links which added reference links to other websites from within the Featured Snippets. Then May 21 Google “bug” showed Featured Snippets that included links to further searches in Google.
While Google has yet to outline any specific plans to roll this out as standard, they have been known to test new SERP features on live results in the past. For instance, they were testing image carousels with Featured Snippets in 2018 before the wider rollout in 2020.
Not only that, but rivals at Bing are already using these techniques extensively. Their SERPs are bursting with contextual links pulling images, copy, and clickable links into the SERPs from Wikipedia.
This suggests to me that contextual links are likely to become a Google thing in the near future.
How might you be able to optimize for this possible feature development? In my humble opinion, it is worth spending some time investing in knowledge hub-style content. Hubs to enable you to become a reference for users on your own site and the wider web. While it is likely that much of the traffic for potential contextual links would go to reference sites like Wikipedia, it is also the case that not every niche term or topic will have a wiki page. So, if you start building now, you could be adding value for current users and future needs of Google’s bots.
Example of a simple knowledge hub
A knowledge hub can be technically simple, or complex, but should be underpinned with good on-page SEO and unique content that is written in natural language.
3. Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready (with structured data)
At the top of the SERP plain blue links are becoming increasingly rare and today your search results are likely to include a mix of links and information from Google managed channels like:
Google for Jobs
Video snippets, predominantly from Google-owned YouTube
Structured Data enabled Rich Results as we see the recipe cards and/or Google Ads
These features are generated using Google APIs, YouTube, services liked Google Ads, and also largely through Structured Data specifications. This serves them well because they deliver the information with a more consistent user experience which is particularly crucial in the constraints of a mobile-first web.
I bring this up in a discussion about SERP resilience because, as these new and shiny features are added, they take the place of plain blue links and, historically, they have been seen to replace Featured Snippets.
During this time, one of the most prominent Featured Snippet category types was for recipes. But Google soon found a more user-friendly way to display this content via mobile-friendly Rich Results.
Now, you might say, Well 2017 was a long time ago, but we’ve seen similar activity this year in February when Moz reported that as the number of Featured Snippets temporarily dropped to historic lows, we also saw a rise in rich results for video at the same time.
And though many of the Featured Snippets returned, the phenomena of SERPs neither being created or destroyed, but simply changing form is a regular occurrence. Even this Summer, it is the case that the prevalence of People Also Ask is steadily declining as Videos increase.
June/July 2021 SERP feature changes as reported by Semrush Sensor
This means that Google SERP developments can cause traffic disruption for pages that are optimized for a single type of search result.
The TLDR of this is, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
If you have a page that performs well as a top-ranking link, Feature Snippet or other feature, don’t expect that to be the case forever because the SERP itself, could completely change.
Protect your traffic by optimizing your pages for relevant APIs and strategic structured data for your niche, alongside your on-page optimizations.
Gain traffic byidentifying competitors who are not using structured data and target your efforts accordingly.
Monitor your niche for changes to Rich Results and Google features, plan accordingly. This will include many of your regular tools, but also manually reviewing the SERP to understand new and emerging elements.
4. Dig into core topics for passage ranking
Google’s commitment to natural language processing within its algorithms gained pace in the last 12 months when Google introduced Passage Ranking at autumn’s Search On 2020 and MUM at Google I/O in Spring 2021.
Often confused with jump to text links, Google has explained that Passage Ranking is intended to help them to understand content more intelligently. Specifically to enable them to find ‘needle in a haystack’ passages that answer queries more accurately, even if the page as a whole is not particularly well-formatted.
The analogy that I often use is that, if we imagine that the SERP was a playlist of songs, then previously, the whole song would have to be strong to make it on to list. Passage Ranking is essentially saying that if the rest of the song is so-so, but the guitar solo is really, really good, then it’s still worth adding that song to the playlist.
On 10 Feb 2021, this update went live and Google said that it would affect 7% of searches and SEOs had a lot of questions:
Will Passage Ranking affect what the SERPs look like?
Will Passage Ranking affect what Featured Snippets look like?
Will Passage Ranking affect Featured Snippets exclusively or only Feature Snippets?
So why am I bringing this up in a discussion about SERPs?
Well, since Passage Ranking is now a contributing factor for ranking, and Featured Snippets are elevated from the top-ranking SERP results, in my opinion, we are likely to see more variation in the kinds of pages that achieve Featured Snippet status. So alongside pages that follow all of the content formatting best practices to the letter, we are likely to see more pages that are offering query satisfying information in a less polished way.
“The goal of this entire endeavor is to help pages that have great information kind of accidentally buried in bad content structure to potentially get seen by users that are looking for this piece of information” – Martin Splitt
Confronted with these results, SEOs who love an If X, Then Y approach may be perplexed but my research has led me to believe that one of the contributing factors is user intent.
Ranking shifts directly following the Passage Ranking update suggest that the content that was boosted sought to answer both the what and why behind the user queries. Case in point, a website that was traditionally optimized for the query different colors of ladybirds owned the Featured Snippet in January.
This page is optimized using many of the established SEO techniques
Literally optimized for the search query
Includes significant formatting optimizations
Covers keyword topic directly to answer What are the different colors of Ladybirds
Core Copy is around 500 words
But after the Passage Ranking update, the same query returned a page that was less literally optimized but provided better contextualization. This usurper showed a better understanding of why ladybirds were different colors and jumped from 5th to 1st position during February.
Reviewing the page itself, we see that in contrast to the earlier snippet, on this page
Core Copy is over 1000 words
Includes limited formatting
Covers intent-based topic, in general, to answer Why
Other examples and other big movers during this time showed a similar correlation with intent-focused search results.
Possible example of Passage Ranking in impact on InvestopediaPossible example of Passage Ranking impact on National Zoo
In each case, it seems that Google is attempting to think ahead about user intent replying to queries with less literal results to better satisfy the thought process behind the query. Their machine learning tools now allow Google to better understand topics as well as keywords.
So, what does this mean for SEOs?
Passage ranking looks like good news for long-form content
Well, where you have a genuine, unique perspective on a topic, Passage Ranking could be an incentive to create more thorough and in-depth content centered around users’ needs rather than search volume alone.
Protect your traffic by optimizing your content for longtail keywords and intent.
Gain snippet traffic by creating intent-focused content. Answer the so what and don’t be afraid of detail.
Consider topics as well as keywords in content, navigation and customer journey.
From a technical SEO perspective, top tactics include solid internal link architecture optimized with long-form content templates with tables of contents.
How can you build SEO resilience for a dynamic SERP?
The same way you dress for a pumpkin spiced autumn day, with layers.
In this blog, I’ve discussed tactics for
Optimizing content for mixed media Featured Snippet panel results
Creating knowledge hubs for potential contextual linking developments
Building structured data into your website before rich results arise
Using Intent Focused Long Form content to potentially benefit from Passage Ranking
There is no single tactic that works in isolation. The SERP is so highly dynamic at the moment, that aiming for, or banking on a single part of the SERP is likely to leave you vulnerable to traffic disruption if/when things evolve. Think about how you can use these tactics to build upon and level up your existing SEO foundations. Change is the only constant, plan accordingly.
Of all the technologies that have changed the mortgage industry in recent years, AI has by far made the biggest impact. Artificial intelligence is allowing loan officers to go far beyond basic automation. In fact, it is revolutionizing every aspect of the mortgage processing experience.
If you want to meet the demands of the modern consumer, then AI must be a part of your loan processing strategy.
Below, our experts outline the ways that AI has benefitted the mortgage industry. We will also show you how you can incorporate artificial intelligence into your firm.
Impact of AI on the Mortgage Industry
For the mortgage industry, AI algorithms were created to make decisions using consumer data. These algorithms can have a positive impact on every part of the mortgage processing experience.
By bringing AI into mortgage processing, companies can take advantage of a number of benefits, which we’ll explore below.
Go Paperless
Processing mortgages with paper documents can be problematic. Paper is expensive to buy, and store. Worst of all, key documents can get lost in the shuffle. This can diminish the client experience and affect your ability to process mortgages efficiently.
Federal law has allowed electronic document processing for over 20 years. Unfortunately, at the time that many of these regulations were introduced, technology was lagging behind. Requirements could vary drastically based on the type of loan product and jurisdiction you were in. In many cases, this left mortgage teams stuck having to manually manage compliance issues.
Thanks to AI, going paperless is now easier than ever before. Intelligent documents can provide cues to each of the parties as they sign documents electronically. These tech tools can even automate compliance rules so that your team knows which kinds of paperwork must have a “wet” signature.
Ensure Data Accuracy
AI and other modern tech tools have also been instrumental in optimizing operational efficiency. Using artificial intelligence software, you can give a client the correct loan documents that are necessary for their file with the click of a button. AI tools can even check to make sure that client data is accurate. It can also allow your team to import information directly from financial institutions.
Best of all, you no longer need to enter in a ton of data manually. AI can improve your ability to process a high volume of mortgages. Customers won’t have to wait for weeks to get an update on their application, only to find out that a document was rejected due to an error.
Tailor the Consumer Experience
Modern consumers expect instant gratification and easy access to data. By leveraging AI, mortgage brokers can exceed this expectation and create a great user experience.
For instance, loan officers can incorporate automated chatbots into their websites. These programs will carry on conversations with curious consumers. They can provide potential clients with information about various products and services.
The goal of AI chatbots is to draw consumers deeper into the sales funnel and satisfy their need for immediate feedback.
Leveraging AI with BNTouch
Ready to make AI part of your loan processing strategy? If so, then it is time to partner with BNTouch.
Our innovative CRM software uses the latest AI technologies. With our help, you can streamline the mortgage buying experience. We have solutions for independent loan officers, growing companies, and multi-location enterprises. Get in on the revolution andbook your free demo today!
