SMX Advanced notes

[Blake Denman]

I'll be live tweeting the sessions that I am in today. Maybe Linda or one of the mods can embed the stream so that way I don't have to come back in and copy and paste everything

twitter: @blakedenman

 

[Dustybones]

That will be a Rawly question. Also, Linda is going to be busy because of the Launch of Google My Business. and thanks for sharing your feed! I will be following

 

[Blake Denman]

Yeah, I'll just add stuff to this thread for now.

First session is a Q&A with Mary Bowling, Matt McGee, Thomas Ballantyne, Dana TiTomaso, and Mike Blumenthal. Got the feeling that we will be talking a lot about GMB

---------- Post Merged at 08:51 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:50 AM ----------

Oh, and David Mihm.

 

[Blake Denman]

Here are all of my notes from the Therapy Session:

SMX Advanced Notes
Local Search Panel #11c
Mike talking about Google My Business. Whole new architecture. Places and Plus are now called My Business.
Q: In terms of local, NAP is price of entry, now need to optimize for the human experience. To separate from the pack, it's much more than that. You have to make your brand stand out more than the competition. Structured markup, reviews, posts, sitelinks, etc. Flip the switch from "link building" to brand building. Lets build your brand and audience. iBeacon...
Q: UBL, Yext, Moz Local. In terms of dist. tools, do you use one or multiple? There isn't currently a solution that solves both the pushing of good data and deletion of bad data in real time. There isn't a solution especially for big brands that have thousands of locations. Naptunes might have a solution. It's $600/location/year.
Franchisee's like to take on some of the local work. Big brands have a much harder time. If you can get the buy-in, have them engage in it.
David Mihm sees that big brands are favored more. Brands should leverage this and build local pages properly.
You really need to focus on the major data providers for Google and Apple. 25-50 max. A lot of directories are taking themselves out of the game. Why would G pay attn to sites that charge to make changes? It's like paid link building. Focus more on building the brand.
Q: If I've marked up and done onsite SEO, can I beat Yelp? Depends on the category, but in most, if you do great brand building, then the answer is yes.
Q: Any schema markups better than others? Be as granular as you can be. They will reward you for doing Schema appropriately. Author, publisher, reviews, all eye candy.
Q: What search impact do owners responses to reviews effect ranking? None. If you're trying to get a ranking boost out of it, you're doing it wrong.
yelp is def important. Apple maps pulls Yelp reviews into local SERPs on the app.
If you're a SAB, Angies List is prime
Be careful about doing Groupons, pissed off people will complain on Yelp.
If you have a customer that is visibly happy, give them a review handout. 301 a site page to (mydomain.com/google) GMB page. You can track the 301's traffic and compare data.
Customers want to be engaged. Give them the interaction, then ask them for a review. Ecommerce can do the same with thankyou pages.
Where do you see Bing & Apple maps going? G dominant world. Don't ignore them, but don't spend too much time on them either.
Call tracking on different directories? It's a fine thing to do with PPC and dynamically on site. Don't do it.
Social and local. Is FB local relevant now? More people check-in's. One of the most popular review platforms. Encourage check-ins
Tracking solution to decipher between maps and organic traffic? They have to work together, no solution right now.

 

[djbaxter]

Please see Google "My Business" Launching Now! Goodbye Google+ Local! HUGE Update! and add any comments or questions about My Business to that thread to avoid duplication.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Blake, I've been too busy with the launch to get here.

Thanks David for mentioning the main "My Business" thread.

Blake I'm running crazy helping folks at 12 different places so no time to get the stream right now. I still need to get the LocalU stream from yesterday and post it too.

This launch has been all consuming for the last 6 days. No time for anything else.

Keep posting updates if you can.

THANKS!

 

[Blake Denman]

No problem, Linda! Google would launch GMB the day of SMX Advanced. The timing is hilarious.

There weren't too many notes for the second session - Keyword Research on Roids. Speakers gave great recommendations on tools to use and how to use them properly. The two tools that stood out were SearchMetrics & SEMRush (paid versions).

Next session is Enhancing Search Results with Struc. Data & Markup. Woot!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Thanks for the great reporting Blake. Very informative stuff right here.

 

[Blake Denman]

Sorry for not spacing properly. Don't have the time to space them out. Enjoy!

Enhancing Search Results With Struc. Data & Markup
#13a
@mdsimmonds - You can expect Schema to be used more and more in the future. From the schema.org FAQ
Different browsers show different schemas. A lot of changes happening, even a few hours later.
Methodology: Jan 12 - last week 14 | 50k referrers p/m to 11m ~ 10 billion pageviews
Seasonality was considered. Speed of discovery/indexation.
Format types: Schema, RDFa, Microdata, Data-vocabularity
Authorship added to sites, no traffic increase. Takeaway - authority of the site | High quality content | Domain longevity | Varies based on query
Factors - author level | reputation: who you are, where you publish, how long | quality of content | Authority of site contributing to - Guest blogging is ok!
You will roll out some and see nothing, but need to compare YoY to get real data.
119% YoY increase from review schema
The more refined searches get, the less recipe schema's you see. G is favoring brands on schema.
Rich snippets are an indication of the health of the site. If you're not seeing them, then their is something wrong.
Video: In 8/10 search results. Picked up within a week, ranking in less than 2.
Authorship: Slow-medium, Sporadic appearance - min traffic impact
TV Reviews: Fast indexation, slower appearance (seasonal) - Med traffic impact
Product Reviews - Fast indexation, fast appearance - good traffic impact
Recipes - Fast indexation, fast appearance - min traffic
Video - fast indexation, very fast appearance, significant impact
Article - difficult to track, doesn't require schema. favors big brands - good traffic impacts
search.nerdydata.com bit.ly/semsearch bit.ly/strutureddatatools
It is early, but it's a good time to get in.
@jaymyers - Best Buys journey with Schema, then and now
Every store has valuable data that should be exposed. YoY saw double digit increases to store pages. Cleaner html, a lot of structured data.
Shop URLs serve as rich data experiences for both humans and machines.
Best Buy uses Microdata & Schema nowadays
Schema is helping drive customer engagement.
Future direction: Gmail actions in the inbox. Schema gmail actions.
GS1 GTIN Initiative: Pilot to improve visibility of product information on the web. semanticweb.com/gs1-exlplores-systems-standards-with-fit-semantic-web_b41164
Feeding knowledge graph: Upcoming events are powered by Schema
Yandex is creating mini apps within search results. You can book an appointment through a SERP, and also check-in to your flight through the SERP. It's all enabled by structured data.
Rich pins: add extra details to your pins to make them more useful. You can add schema markup to your pins to help you get better visibility on Pinterest.
@jeffreypreston - Disney Interactive
Structured data helps search engines better understand content and markup. Will not fix other SEO problems.
Open Graph: Add code to page, title, type of page, thumbnail, canonical, etc. Ensures additional data avail for video, images, etc
Wrap nav in Schema. Sitelinks show up in SERPs
Make sure to add schema to executive and staff bios
For Products: Good Relations markup
Twitter cards. You have to apply with Twitter for your cards to be approved. Takes about a week or so.
Google is pulling a lot of Knowledge Graph data from freebase.com, Wikipedia, and schema.org markup.
Q: When rich snippets lost, what were other indicators of site health? Site was in a bad place, more of a wake up call.
Q: Rel publisher can be a high signal for smaller Knowledge Graph.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Blake so much.

Is there a lot of buzz about GMB? Is that the talk of the show? Or not so much since it's more of a general SEO event?

 

[Blake Denman]

Not much GMB talk. They have 1 local session out the 2 days. Mike B. talked about it for about 5 minutes at the beginning of the session.

 

[Blake Denman]

25 Link Acquisition & Auditing Issues for the Adv. SEO
#14a
Don't have time, $, content, a great product, or engagement with customers? Then link earning isn't right for you
Brand Mentions w/o Link: Preventative and easy to implement bit.ly/BrandMentions
Uses Moz Fresh Web Explorer and set up notifications.
Use Google advanced search parameters to find potential link sources site:gov "query" | site:edu inurl:links | inurl:resources inurl:helpful-resources
Common reasons they outlink: Events, sponsors, interviews, student resources, career resources, many more
default inurl:"industry keyword" site:"org, edu, gov"
Outreach: Find the right contact. Avoid using the word link. test test test! Brainstorm with your team. Think outside the box to offer value. Follow up. Consider social media 1st: follow, subscribe, wait and then contact
@puriprashant - Creating share worthy content | Identify link worthy sites | Outreach
Local hot tip: Use UberSuggest to search for a business name. UberSuggest uses Google's Keyword Suggest data. Create content specific to what your audience is asking! (this was not in the presentation)
Content Runner gives you ideas for creating content
50% of links from DA < 30 = red flag
Out of 150k pages - top 7 pages drive 51% of links - no bueno
Use new link reports to watch for negative SEO. Negative SEO is live and well. check out Fiverr and search for negative SEO to see examples. Use Ahrefs for new links and GWT data.
barracuda digital panguin tool. Syncs with Google analytics and shows you annotations on penalties that happened
Use Excel advanced filter to sort out duplicate link urls from multiple sources
Automated system to first sift through: Link Detox Tool by Link Research Tools. Good starting guide, but don't trust outright
If it's an algo penalty, will never hear back if uploading a disavow file. It's better taking the time to try and clean the links up manually.
Manual: Find contact info. Outsource to Odesk, Scrapebox
Outreach: Personalized emails including site name and url
at least two rounds of emails
record results of each round
Pitchbox: Automating your outreach