Brighton SEO Notes – Part 1

Driving meaningful clicks with enriched SERPs  – Isobel Smith
Slides here
The following 3 bullet points should be a department standard anyway but it’s always good to recap:

• Identify intents based on SERP Features
• Stop wasting time on no-click queries that are probably taken by Knowledge Graph anyway
• Mid-longtail queries are becoming more lucrative – create/expand your content guided by PAAs -> you can do this via a custom PAA report in STAT linked to your client site/tracked keywords

When you appear in a featured snippet on the right hand side that is actually position 11 – so sometimes pos. 11 is not such a bad thing – investigate if you’re a snippet or the top of page 2
Make sure you claim all your client knowledge panels via GSC
Invest in mobile image thumbnails for your most valuable/mobile-traffic driving pages so when you appear in a carousel or a featured snippet your image/logo etc. is sized correctly and optimised for mob
Jumplinks
Try and implement jumplinks within your content if you can (led by H tags of course). Google have started scraping them and are providing extra links in SERPs:
 
Featured Snippets: The Achievable SERP Feature? – Emily Potter
Slides here
Always remember that featured snippets depending on the query provide a confirmation bias.
e.g. Are reptiles good pets vs. Are reptiles bad pets will each provide a different selection of results as they have different intents.
Apparently position 4 is more likely to convert
Obvious (as again it should be a department standard in optimisation etc.) is:

• Turn content into lists (the time of the annoying slideshow is over)
• Turn prices into tables

Look at what your competitors are doing to win featured snippets/Answer Boxes

• Are they answering the query better
• What format are they using (list/tables etc.)
• Are they phrasing headings better

 
Plan of action re: your war on featured snippets:
1. Find keywords you rank for with featured snippets
a. Avoid keywords with commercial intent
b. Flag where you rank higher than the current owner
2. Look for low hanging fruit
a. Steal headings from competitors (especially where you rank higher)
3. Add on-page content for well performing pages (investigate PAAs)
4. Re-format your content to match that of the current owner
a. lists, tables positioning of content etc.
 
A Structured Data Case Study: How to Make Your Websites Stand Out in Search – Kenichi Suzuki
Slides here
Here are all the different types of structured data that Google currently supports (list on left hand side): https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/article
Which structured data features are best for your site? Help you decide: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7358659#choose_features
Another good website is https://schema.org/docs/schemas.html
Test your structured data using the Google Tool: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool
 
Leveraging E-A-T for SEO Success – Lily Ray
Slides here
E-A-T stands for:
“
Expert
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness
 
..of the creator of the main content, the main content itself and the website”
 
E-A-T focuses on YMYL – Your Money, Your Life
 
…pages that impact the future happiness, health, financial stability or safety of users”
 
-Basically health sites something we know – but to what extent was the content in E-A-T analysed?

• Deceptive content
  • “Every page on the Internet is created for a purpose…websites that are created with intent to harm users, deceive users, or make money with no attempt to help users, should receive the lowest quality rating” -> So be transparent to your users
• Expertise
  • “For all pages that have a beneficial purpose, the amount of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness is very important. Please consider the expertise of the creator of the main content.”
• Authorship
  • “The reputation and E-A-T of the creators of the main content is extremely important when a website has different authors or content creators on different pages. Research the reputation and E-A-T of both the website and the creators of the main content.”
    • Look at author citations (medical professionals and their authorship in publications in particular)
    • Media coverage
    • Robust expert content
    • High quality content
  • Advertisements
    • “We expect Ads to be visible. However, pages with Ads or features that distract from or interrupt the use of the main content should be given a low-quality rating.”
  • External Reviews
    • “Use reputation research to find out what real users, as well as experts, think about a website. Look for reviews, references, recommendations by experts, news articles, and other credible information.”
      • Look at external review sites such as Trustpilot, Yelp, Tripadvisor etc.
      • Negative reviews can no longer be ignored. They add up and harm online reputation
    • Trust Issues
      • “When there is disagreement between what the website says about itself and what reputable independent sources say about the website, we’ll trust the independent sources.”
        • Low ratings on external sites
        • Lack of official credentials
        • Customer service issues
        • Lack of industry consensus

 
So how can all the above be taken into account and effectively implemented?

• Expand the ‘About Us’ Page
  • “Every page belongs to a website, and it should be clear who (what individual, company, business, foundation, etc.) is responsible for the website.”
• Look at User Generated Content (comments)
  • “We’ll consider a comment or forum discussion to be “spammed” if there are posts with unrelated comments that are not intended to help other users, but rather to advertise a product or create a link to a website.”

Backlinks still play a part here so we should all be keeping an eye on the relevancy and health of our backlink profiles
 
5 Quick Tips to Improve E-A-T

1. Improve your online reputation and reviews on 3rd party websites
2. Don’t overwhelm your users with ads or try to deceive them
3. Disclose who your brand is, who your authors are, and why they should be trusted
4. Cite credible sources and receive (organic!) links from credible sources
5. Make sure YMYL content is supported by scientific evidence

 
 6 Things Your Boss Expects You Should Know About SEO – Lukasz Zelezny
Slides pending 
Biggest thing from his talk was if your blog is currently on a subdomain move it to a /blog/ folder on your main domain and bask in the increase in visibility/traffic/rankings etc.
 
Huge SEO success stories and what we can learn from them – Marcus Tober
Slides pending 
Talked about combining PPC and SEO for improved value – save on PPC by reducing cannibalisation and then use that saved money for SEO.