Branded3

Is this the Retail Apocalypse? No! So, stop blaming Millennials for stores closing

Dan Saunders — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 10:30:58 +0000

Napoleon famously didn’t see the British as a threat because, in his words, we are “nation of shopkeepers.” And it’s safe to say that we do love shopping.

So why are big brands like Toys-R-Us, Maplin, BHS, and New Look being forced to close stores?

The media seems to consistently blame one major culprit: Millennials. However, millennials are not to blame for the fall of these big retail brands. And here’s how I know.

Millennials shop in actual stores

Millennials prefer real life stores! I thought the opposite when I started my research for this piece but it’s true! Crazy right?

Not when you think about.

Millennials grew up with Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram, so they have had ample opportunity to shop online. But as we can see from the Forbes study cited above, their behaviour is not much different from that of other, older consumers.

It seems millennials like the way stores allow us to try before we buy, pick up a bargain, browse similar items, or, scarily enough, just buy something outright!

Figure 1: Struggling UK retailers vs Amazon.co.uk

Why the high street is getting quiet

Only 3 of the top 20 retailers in the UK are not bricks and mortar stores and (if you don’t include Amazon), the other two store-less retailers don’t appear until the teens.

So why are big high street brands disappearing?

Amazon is one of the key reasons that physical shops are on the decline (see figure 1).

Between 2010 and 2017, Amazon’s sales increased from £11.3bn to £56bn. Half of all US households are now on Amazon Prime, and Amazon’s UK sales smashed the £6 billion mark last year!

But in truth, there’s more to the story than just Amazon’s dynasty.

Online shopping is extremely convenient for consumers, and traditional retailers can’t keep up. One thing in the economy rings true: to succeed in business, you must adapt – or you die! Sadly, it seems many companies are not willing to adapt (See Figure 2).

Figure 2. Graph showing the visibility of the UK’s top 4 retailers

Why does online have the edge on store fronts?

Whether we’re shopping for cupcakes, flowers, or a honeymoon in Greece, the Internet has changed how we decide what to buy. There are many factors at play that have made online shopping a more favourable route for consumers:

Location, location, location? Not for ecommerce

Shops usually do the bulk of their business in the area the store is located, but this isn’t the case with e-commerce. Customers from one corner of the world can easily order almost anything from anywhere with the few clicks, making it easy and convenient to shop from your screen.

Gain new customers with SEO

Stores rely on traditional advertising, branding, and repeat visits to build a customer base. While online stores also rely on these aspects, a huge amount of their traffic comes from search engines.

While it doesn’t look good for business if you’re standing outside your store trying to herd people in, that’s pretty much what Google does for e-commerce. Consumers start by Googling what they want and, based on how high up in the SERPs it is, clicking on a site that they might eventually make a purchase form.

Lower costs

In most cases, running an e-commerce website is cheaper than operating a physical store, and these savings can be (and are often are) passed on to customers. An e-commerce site doesn’t need instore staff, it doesn’t need to own and manage a physical store front, and marketing is mainly dependant on SEO, pay-per-click, and social media traffic which is cheaper than the traditional advertising that physical stores often also have to invest in.

Knowledge is power

There’s a limit to how much merchandise you can display in store and how much information employees can retain for customers enquires. But there’s virtually no limit to what e-commerce websites can stock and say about their products! An online platform allows for endless possibilities in terms of what (and how) products are sold.

Targeted marketing

Using customer’s data, e-commerce sites can access a lot of information and use it to connect with customers. For example, if you are searching for something on Amazon, you will see listings of similar products and they’ll also email you to keep you updated on the latest products that you may like.

It’s great, but it’s not perfect: The challenges of e-commerce

If done right, e-commerce will help your business to grow. But if you mess it up, it can have a negative effect. These are the top 3 mistakes companies make on their e-commerce websites:

Low quality content

When Google released the Panda algorithm, quality content became a top priority for any site. This is easy to fix – for example, product pages need to be more than pages with a photo and blurbs about a product.

Amazon, for example, features customer product reviews, photos, and videos. You also can’t just use the same, generic descriptions provided by the manufacturer. To increase your SEO rankings, you need to have custom product descriptions – Vue do this extremely well. (Yes, this is one of our case studies, but can you think of a better example?!).

Poor technical SEO

I have clients coming to me all the time saying “Dan, we need you to build links.” “Dan, we need content.” “Dan, we need PPC.”

First question: Do you clean up your house before inviting people over… Of course you do! So why don’t you make sure your site is in a fit state before you start outreaching with digital marketing?

If you don’t get your technical SEO right, none of your hard work will index and you’ve just flushed away all that budget spent on outreach. Make some nice clean URLs, add detailed breadcrumbs, make the journey from viewing to purchasing as simple and as straightforward as possible, speed up your page loading times, and, for the love of Rick, make sure you’re on HTTPS!

No links + No trust = No customers

Now this is hard, but it’s 100% worth your investment. Whether it’s through content, influencer marketing, discount sites, or review sites, you need links. Why? Because links increase site traffic, give your site legitimacy, and provide a great place for your customers to access content that they can’t find anywhere else!

Marrying e-commerce and the high street

In short, high street stores are dying off because people have no reason to go to them. How do you fix this? Give people a reason to go!

We can’t dictate the way the world works, and the world wants e-commerce. However, you can focus on transforming your in-store experience so that it’s worth the journey.

Make your store more engaging, and you’ll increase footfall and sales. Inject digital into the physical shopping experience, and you’re on your way to getting ahead of the curve – check it out at Adobe Summit 2016 for inspiration.

Apple is one brand that has a famously popular in-store experience – here’s why:

It brings the digital world into its stores

Apple knows that most of the world is online and most of that population shop online. By having features such as the ability make Genius Bar appointments online, Apple is blending the in-store experience with digital capabilities.

It offers a seamless customer experience

Whether you’re shopping online or in store, you know what an Apple product looks like, and Apple stores look like Apple products! It is so good at branding, their storefronts don’t even need a logo.

It knows that knowledge is power

You can’t buy an Apple product from an Apple Store while uninformed (believe me, I’ve tried). You basically have no choice but to try out products in store, and you benefit from the human element as the store specialists are armed with iPads and computers everywhere you turn. Apple makes sure you know how good the product you’re buying is!

To conclude: Don’t shy away from digital

It’s not just Apple who have adapted to the modern consumer – other brands are taking notice. At Yext’s Explorer conference, Jaguar Land Rover said it is using Land Rover experience days to sell Land Rovers, and that each Jaguar showroom is going to have a classic car for its customers to see and feel. Argos, Sainsbury’s, and Tesco are finally starting to think about in store experience as well!

If there’s one key takeaway from this post, it’s don’t treat digital commerce as an enemy – treat it as a support structure that helps you drive sales on all channels.

How to factor trust into your link building strategy (without ripping it up and starting again)

Stephen Kenwright — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 06:30:08 +0000

How to factor trust into your link building strategy (without ripping it up and starting again)

Back in April Bill Slawski covered a patent apparently updating PageRank, the calculation Google originally used to rank its results (and still a major feature of the algorithm as far as we know). Bill notes that the update bears a strong resemblance to the TrustRank patent grated to Yahoo! in 2004…as did the previous continuation patent, granted in 2006.

The MozTrust metric did a great job of illustrating what Yahoo! tried to do with TrustRank:

We determine MozTrust by calculating link “distance” between a given page and a “seed” site — a specific, known trust source (website) on the Internet. Think of this like six degrees of separation: The closer you are linked to a trusted website, the more trust you have.

Using both MozTrust and Majestic’s equivalent TrustFlow metric to assess offsite factors we recently found that trust generally correlated better with ranking improvements than relevance – though we’ve had a strong indication of this for a while and it seems likely that Google has been using some variant of “TrustRank” to value pages for at least a decade (again, see Bill’s previous post). Moz’ Domain Authority metric is effectively a combination of MozRank (a proxy for PageRank) and MozTrust…so to use that metric to illustrate what seems to be happening: MozRank (authority) should be a slightly less significant aspect of Domain Authority, with MozTrust taking greater importance. We’ve always been more fond of the MozTrust metric than Domain Authority because it’s harder to game – we’re taking Moz’ interpretation of which sites are considered trustworthy, but the crawler can easily determine whether a site has links from those sites or not (and trusted sites are much less likely to be added to a disavow file, which skews Domain Authority massively).

The patent Bill wrote about, titled “Producing a ranking for pages using distances in a web-link graph”, references many of the central components of MozTrust and shows how the distance (i.e. number of linking “hops”) between a seed site and your website will be factored in when Google calculates search rankings. As with most patents it isn’t clear whether the exact techniques outlined are in use (or when they came into use), but there are strong indications that the “TrustRank” patent is, or should be.

Why using trusted “seed” sites makes sense

There’s a reason it’s called the web: linking chains aren’t linear and no two websites’ link profiles look the same.

How the link graph looks when trusted seed pages are separated from non-seed pages.

PageRank “flows” through paid and earned links equally. Anchor text also seems to be equally applicable to paid and earned links. It’s likely that devalued links – backlinks from sites Google has determined to be selling links or spammy in some other way – do not pass less PageRank and the effects of anchor text are not “switched off”. Rather, Google decides to simply not trust those sites anymore.

The Beginner’s Guide to SEO encourages us to think about linking in the context of voting for sites we approve of: in this scenario nobody is prevented from casting their ballot but votes that have been paid for are thrown out for fraud and never counted. This will sometimes go undiscovered for months (even years), but once found out, that site’s vote will never be counted again…regardless of whether future votes are unbiased with money.

I’d strongly recommend considering (and writing down) your policies around building links on sites that you suspect of selling links – this will save you time in the long run. Consider adding some steps to your QA process:

Use Bing’s linkfromdomain: search operator (e.g. linkfromdomain:moz.com) to see every website your link target already links to. Are there brands linked to that don’t seem to fit the theme of the website? A few quick site: searches will show you how natural those posts actually are.
Read the 10 most recent posts at a minimum. You’re looking for anchor text that doesn’t seem like it should be there; mentions of brands where a competitor could easily be substituted (e.g. credit card providers like company name); and disclaimers (sponsored post, guest post, advertorial post, in collaboration/partnership with). Put the site on a list not to contact in future if any of these show up.
Keep your do not contact list in a separate tab to your hitlist and use VLOOKUP to make sure you’re not contacting someone you previously decided not to. We’ve turned this into a Chrome extension to save time: when we visit a website we know if we’ve previously worked with a journalist or blogger using the site, who contacted them (and therefore who already has a relationship) and what the content was about – or if we’ve decided not to work with the site (or added it to a client’s disavow file).

If you’ve made contact with a site owner for the first time; they’ve shown interest in the brand and/or content you’d like them to talk about; but now they’re asking for payment…should you walk away? Not necessarily. This call should be made on a case by case basis because – assuming you followed a QA process to identify the site and it appeared natural enough in the first place – simply because you don’t want to waste time. Again, this is where a written process or policy comes in handy: your reply should say that it’s against your company’s policy to buy links (and therefore you couldn’t do it even if you wanted to) but also highlight Google’s policy on link selling. No brand ever wants to be outed for buying links since that often leads to manual actions; but no blogger wants to be outed for selling them either because that will ultimately destroy their source of income (that doesn’t mean your reply should sound threatening!). In my experience around 1 link in 5 gets placed for free where payment was initially asked for – I’ll walk away from the other four and place the site on a do not contact list.

Private Blog Networks (PBNs) are gaining in popularity once again because they work – but it’s no coincidence that most of the rhetoric still concerns how to keep them hidden. Between 2012 and 2014 it was pretty usual that links from a PBN to your website uncovered by Google’s Webspam team would result in a manual action or algorithmic penalty…it’s since become more likely that those links will just stop counting (become “devalued”) and your rankings will fall over time. That’s not to say that manual actions are unheard of in 2018 but it’s 100% clear that some brands are getting away with it.

Although Google has previously claimed that it doesn’t use data from disavow files uploaded to Google Search Console to determine rankings, it would provide a way to crowdsource large numbers of seed sites. From the patent’s abstract:

Generally, it is desirable to use a large number of seed pages to accommodate the different languages and a wide range of fields which are contained in the fast growing web contents. Unfortunately, this variation of PageRank requires solving the entire system for each seed separately. Hence, as the number of seed pages increases, the complexity of computation increases linearly, thereby limiting the number of seeds that can be practically used.

Through the disavow links tool Google has access to lists of websites that SEOs don’t think are trustworthy (often because they paid for links from those sites). As Marie Haynes pointed out last year, Penguin is not a machine learning algorithm – but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Google is using machine learning to determine which sites can be trusted from disavow file data.

How this changes our link acquisition tactics

Any updates Google makes to its algorithms shouldn’t affect the actual process of outreach: we’re still talking to humans and link building is about relationships and mutual benefit (and a completely different kind of trust).

What should change is how we choose our targets.

Links that benefit us most come from seed sites (or sites with links from seed sites). We obviously don’t really know which websites Google trusts but there’s a good chance that websites with a high MozTrust score are trusted by Google too – and they’re more likely to be linked to from trusted seed sites, even if they don’t fall into that category themselves.

Metrics aside, it should be pretty obvious which websites are the most trusted on the web – they tend to be universities and government organisations (and the SEO industry has been clear that .gov and .edu links are more valuable for a long time); plus national and international press and sites with extremely high readerships…that doesn’t mean that highly trafficked sites with contributors frequently offering to sell links (Forbes, Huffington Post etc.) are well trusted – they probably aren’t.

Other link targets that should definitely be at the top of your priority list are any publishing sites which compete with your own website in search results – tech companies absolutely want links from techcrunch.com, not just because they’re relevant, but because they’re clearly trusted enough to rank competitively for terms we also want to rank for. The patent “Producing a ranking for pages using distances in a web-link graph patent” also references the importance in diversity of themes covered by seed sites – links from trusted sites outside of your industry or country are still likely to pass a significant amount of trust and therefore benefit your search rankings.

Ultimately we want to evidence the trust these seed sites have in our websites. Though there’s still a strong argument for a diverse link profile, we’ve found results have been best when we keep returning to the well and getting multiple links from a site we’re confident is trusted. This has always made sense from an efficiency point of view: if we’ve built a relationship with a journalist who writes for TechCrunch, for example, it’s more likely that she will continue to cover our brand/feature our content – it’s usually easier to get a second, third or fourth link from techcrunch.com than it is to get the first.

In reality there’s no way to know whether Google trusts a website – and how much. What’s clear now more than ever is that trust has a significant bearing on whether a site will rank or not. Considering this in our strategies using the information available has been paying dividends for a while.

I’d love to know what you think – is trust a core component in your link acquisition? Tweet me.

adwordsR: How to get Adwords API data using R

Sean Longthorpe — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 14:00:29 +0000

R has many uses, a particular highlight being its simple integration with various APIs, such as the Google Analytics API. These simple API integrations usually rely on packages, and integration into the Google Adwords API is no different. We have built our own R package for interacting with the Adwords API: adwordsR.

How does the adwordsR package work?

The current version of the adwordsR package (0.3.1) has three basic components: Google authentication via OAUTH2, reporting, and SOAP requests.

Google Authentication

This has effectively two parts: generating the access token and refreshing the access token. All the user has to do is try and load their token. This will either generate the access token if it does not exist in their work directory, or load the existing acess token.

Users must have their client ID, client secret, and Adwords Developer token handy and enter them when prompted.

Reporting

This accesses the reporting service from the Adwords API. It works by building the AWQL query, and then sending it to the API. The response is then a CSV text file which is cleaned into the requested format.

SOAP Requests

This is for accessing all parts of the API that are not reporting. The package allows you to choose the service that you want to access and then builds an XML file for you. The XML file is sent to the API and an XML response is returned.

Unfortunately, the XML response is not cleaned on its response, however we do highly recommend the XML package as this can parse an XML file into a list. We do plan to integrate XML parsing functionality into future versions.

A diagram of the workflow of retrieving Adwords data using adwordsR is found below.

Why did we build the adwordsR package

Before the adwordsR package, we had raw R code in our processes and applications that didn’t make the code particularly elegant, or we needed to copy the functions from elsewhere when we wanted to reuse it.

Yes, we could have stored the functions in a file, and called those source files, but this is basically how a package works – so why not build it properly?

The advantage of building the functions into a package is that we now have clean code that is much easier to maintain, which saves us a world of time when we want to upgrade any of our toolkit.

Will it make my life easier?

If you use R and Adwords, this package will make it much easier to get data from the API through a robust process, rather than just exporting files and data from the Adwords interface.

If you’ve already used the RAdwords package, the main points of interest are for parts of the Adwords API that are not easily accessible using R. You can easily get a list of all of your clients that are child to your parent’s MCC account using the ManagedCustomerService, or search volumes using the TargetingIdeaService, like we see below.

Why did we not want to rely on the RAdwords package?

The current RAdwords package is great – we’ve learnt a great deal from this package and incorporated a lot of its concepts into our package. But unfortunately, RAdwords was lacking for our requirements and did not offer us is the ability to interact with other sections of the Adwords API, such as the Managed Customer Service, which was a necessity.

Our package aims to integrate multiple services within the Adwords API into one package. Currently, the package is limited to Reporting, the Managed Customer Service, and the Targeting Idea Service. However, we plan to integrate more services into the package.

Why did we not build on the RAdwords package instead of building an entirely new package?

Before building the package, we had our R code hardcoded into our processes. The sections of the code that did not rely on the RAdwords package were hardcoded and the functions that were built were declared within the session.

They did not come from the RAdwords package, and for ease of use we decided to build these into a package. We then decided to incorporate the workflow of the RAdwords package into our own package so that two packages did not have to be loaded within the process.

By using this approach, it was an opportunity to revamp our existing adwordsR code and the RAdwords code. As such, we do recognise the author of the RAdwords package, Johannes Burkhardt, to be a large contributor of the adwordsR package, as this package would not exist without the existence of the RAdwords package.

Where can I access and install the package?

There are multiple places that you can get the package, and all it takes is a line of R code, depending on your preferred method.

I present two methods here of acquiring the package: CRAN and CRAN Github. All you need to do is copy and paste either of the following pieces of code and run them on your installed R version

CRAN:
```
install.packages("adwordsR")
```

Github:

devtools::install_github("cran/adwordsR")

Alternatively, contact us for a tarball of the package.

Let us know how you’ve been using the adwordsR package!

SearchLeeds 2018 – all the slides and what we learned

Stephen Kenwright — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 09:50:48 +0000

What is SearchLeeds?

SearchLeeds is the biggest digital marketing conference in the north of England. This year more than 1,500 people joined us at Leeds first direct arena on the 14^th June to watch 36 speakers deliver talks about paid and organic search, content marketing, data and digital.

What we learned this year

Shout out to some #SearchLeeds speakers…

We have 5 first time speakers and almost a third of our speakers have done less than 5 talks: you’re on the bill because 1. We know you’ll be absolutely awesome and 2. You wanted to talk about something that we think will blow our minds pic.twitter.com/e0rekBzfae

— Stephen Kenwright (@stekenwright) June 14, 2018

We’re hugely grateful to everyone who gave up their time to speak at SearchLeeds. We received nearly 4x as many speaking pitches as we had slots to fill (and we approached some of our eventual speakers ourselves).

5 speakers delivered their first talks at SearchLeeds this year – including Mayflex’s Luke Carthy who stepped up 3 days before the event – and we want to make sure we get similar numbers of new speakers next year. A third of our speakers had delivered less than 5 talks – we put two of them on the main arena stage and they got some of the best feedback. So we know to programme the tracks on the strength of the talks rather than the experience of the speakers.

This year was the first we had specific themes for each stage: the Search Laboratory Stage returned yet again but exclusively as a paid media and data themed track; this year we also had the SISTRIX Technical SEO Stage. Last year the least attended talks were the PPC focused talks on the main arena stage; this year the PPC talks on the Search Laboratory stage were totally full, with people sitting on the floor (sorry!)

We did plan for an increased attendance (50% bigger third stage, 300% bigger second stage) but they were still both full. We’re looking at potentially taking even bigger spaces in the arena for next year.

It’s pretty clear to us now that the best pitches translate into being the best attended talks and the more detail speakers can give us, the more people end up in their sessions. We’re looking at additional labelling of talks next year so attendees know how advanced a session is and what they can expect to get out of it.

We recorded the talks on the main arena stage – we’re looking into the possibility of live streaming all the talks next year because even though we got attendees from 8 countries we know not everyone can make it.

The slides

Stage One – main arena

St. Ives Chief Digital Officer J Schwan

The Future Doesn’t Exist in Silos

SearchLeeds 2018 – J Schwan – St Ives group – The future doesn’t exist in silos from Branded3

Purna Virji – Bing

Intelligent Search and Intelligent Assistants: Exploring the AI-era of Search

Rob McGowan – Edit

Useless Projects: Where AI Meets Human Creativity

Kirsty Hulse – Manyminds

Content Marketing Tips That Won’t Break the Bank (Or Your Spirit)

Hannah Smith – Verve Search

What Happens When a Werewolf Bites a Goldfish?

Jon Myers – DeepCrawl

The Mobile-First Index: What, Why and Most Importantly When

Kristal Ireland – Virgin Trains East Coast

Will Robots Destroy Us All? Putting the Ethical Debate Back into the Narrative Around the Future of AI

Jasper Bell – AmazeRealise

Retailers – Stop Thinking Store, Start Thinking Story

Lexi Mills – Shift6

Advanced Integrated Influence Strategies and Tactics

Kelvin Newman – Rough Agenda / BrightonSEO

Three Practical (and Inventive) Ways of Pinching Keyword Insight from Your Competitors

Branded3 Strategy Director Stephen Kenwright

Customer-Centric Search: Serving People Better for Competitive Advantage

SearchLeeds 2018 – Stephen Kenwright – Branded3 – Customer-centric search: serving people better for competitive advantage from Branded3

SISTRIX Technical SEO Stage

Bastian Grimm – Peak Ace

Super Speed Around the Globe

Gerry White – Just Eat

Past, Present and the Future of Mobile

Steve Chambers – Stickyeyes

How Not to F*ck Up a Migration

Fili Wiese, Search Brothers

Structured data explained

Kristine Schachinger, Sites Without Walls

Entities, Search, and Rank Brain: How it works and why it matters

Dawn Anderson – Move It Marketing

Power from What Lies Beneath: The Iceberg Approach to SEO

Dave Freeman – Treatwell

Creating Knockout On-site Content by Simply Understanding Your Customers

Luke Carthy – Mayflex

How to Optimise the S*** out of Your On-site Search

Rachel Costello – DeepCrawl

Stop Confusing Search Engines with Conflicting Signals

Julia Logan – Irish Wonder

How to Audit Your Site for Security

Oliver Brett – Screaming Frog

Why SEO Wizards Need User Testing Hobbits

Craig Campbell

How to Fix the Most Common SEO Issues Using SEMrush

Search Laboratory Stage

Jill Quick – The Coloring In Department

Track Your Campaigns Like a Bloodhound: Making Your Marketing Work Harder

Branded3 Senior Insights & Analytics Queen Emma Barnes

Analytics Tracking: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Google Tag Manager

SearchLeeds 2018 – Emma Barnes – Branded3 – Analytics Tracking: or how I learned to stop worrying and love Google Tag Manager from Branded3

Andraz Stalec – Red Orbit

5 False Assumptions About Your Traffic

Hannah McKie – Missguided

PLAs: Small Company or Large, Everyone Has to Start Somewhere

Chris Rowett – Journey Further

Supercharing Google Shopping

Angus Hamilton – Search Laboratory

Enterprise Attribution

Holly Ellwood – Receptional

What’s New in PPC

Matt Holmes – Distrelec

The International Paid Search Playbook

Anu Adegbola – MindSwan

AdWords Script Automation & Pitfalls

John Rowley – Ferrero

Creating a Data-Driven Customer Journey with Personas and Smarter Investment

Elizabeth Clark – Dream Agility

The Future of Shopping

Branded3 & Edit Media Directors Jon Greenhalgh & Sam Wright

How to Deliver Growth in the Most Efficient Way Possible

SearchLeeds 2018 – Jon Greenhalgh & Sam Wright – Edit & Branded3 – How to deliver growth in the most efficient way possible from Branded3

Please email us any feedback about the event, positive or otherwise – we’re looking for suggestions to make next year even better.

Do you want to speak next year? Let us know. The more detail you can give us around your talk, the more likely people are to like it and the more likely we are to put you on stage!

SearchLeeds 2018: Stage One Live Blog

Steph Naylor — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 14:51:06 +0000

17:00

That’s a wrap!

Thank you to everyone who came along to Search Leeds 2018, and a big thanks to our fabulous speakers and sponsors, we hope you had an amazing time.

We’ll see you all next year!

16.35

Now is the time to move on from “user experience” as a ranking factor – the only result that matters is the one with the best customer experience overall.

SEO will help brands deliver the best customer experience, because we are tailoring content to show users the exact search results they want to see (Did you know that 2017 was the first year that brands spent more money on search than they did on TV advertising?).

We need to keep 3 main things in mind when thinking about creating the best customer experience:

Do people want it?
Does Google like it?
Will it make the business money?

We also need to think about link relevancy when pushing out our content, Steve recently conducted a study on this. He says that acquiring links from relevant pages is more important than acquiring links from relevant domains (you can read the full study here: https://www.branded3.com/blog/relevant-linkbuilding-study/).

Key stats:

40% of searches are moving to YouTube
60% of people are still watching cat videos
54% are watching ‘How to’ videos

He settles the great meta description debate!

Steve says that the main purpose of meta data is to encourage people to click through to your site – so keep testing it until you get it right!

This slide summarised Steve’s talk perfectly:

16.35`

Our very own Stephen Kenwright closes the show

Branded3’s Director of Strategy is ending the day, a big thank to everyone who stuck around for Steve’s talk.

Customer-centric search: serving people better for competitive advantage.

You can follow him on Twitter @stekenwright.

16.10

Pinching keyword insight from your competitors

Kelvin Newman from Rough Agenda and organiser of Brighton SEO is sharing his insight into alternative keyword research. Follow him on Twitter @kelvinnewman.

“Just write for your user is a lazy suggestion”, we can better understand the user if we can better understand how other sites are writing about a topic.

Optimising your website’s #keywords? Take a page out of your competitors book recommends @kelvinnewman of #brightonSEO! Oh, and try using a tool called textise #SearchLeeds

— DeepCrawl (@DeepCrawl) June 14, 2018

14.55

Just a few minutes in and already so many actionable insights from @leximills on using #ML and #AI like #publishers do for better #SEO and #PR results; make #content based on what’s trending on #amazon! #searchleeds pic.twitter.com/w2E9ANytRm
— DeepCrawl (@DeepCrawl) June 14, 2018

14.55

Advanced integrated influence strategy and tactics

Lexi Mills from Shift6 is up next! Follow her on Twitter @leximills.

She’ll be talking about incorporating Machine Learning / AI to help with your SEO & content strategy.

14.55

Retailers…Stop thinking store, start thinking story

Jasper Bell, Head of Commerce from AmazeRealise is sharing his expertise on how to understand your customers better, and how to give them a unique shopping experience.

Follow him at @jasperbelluk

So, who are AmazeRealise?

Customers are rarely loyal, and brands are failing to make a connection with their customers – so what do we do about this?

Jasper explains, that we need ‘story thinking’ and the way brands can do this is by:

making a human connection
creating a narrative that puts customers at the front and centre
maintaining the pace

Check out this awesome diagram:

Thanks, Jasper!

We think he liked our fancy lights, too!

pic.twitter.com/SFC8chBjX8
— Jasper Bell (@jasperbelluk) 14 June 2018

14.40

“AI undoubtedly has the potential to unlock a paradigmatic shift in the way that humans live, work and love in the world we call home. But is enough attention being payed to the ethical considerations companies and brands need to make in the face of such a brave new world? So much of the narrative around AI is focused around ‘how we can’ as opposed to asking the much bigger questions of whether we even should.”

14.30

Will robots destroy us all?

Kristal Ireland, Head of Ecommerce & Technology at Virgin East Coast Trains is up next. She’ll be putting ethical debate back into the narrative about the future of AI.

Follow Kristal at @kristalsmile

Absolutely amazing talk at @SearchLeeds by Kristal Ireland from @Virgin_TrainsEC on ethical AI and how we still need people – technology isn’t human. But also great examples on where there is AI for good #searchleeds pic.twitter.com/LiJtzgUOhj
— Robert Allan Jones (@robert_a_jones) June 14, 2018

There has been a lot of hype around mobile first indexing recently, but is it important?

Danny says, “yes”.

Users who have a bad mobile user experience are 60% less likely to revisit and purchase from that brand in the future, and Google will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site.

Will keyword rankings be affected?

Danny explains that if your mobile content is reduced and doesn’t contain terms the page was previously ranking for on desktop, then rankings will be affected. So, the following things need to be consistent across desktop and mobile

Content
Metadata
Markup
Hreflang
Images
Alt attributes
Indexing rules
Canonical tags

(All of these elements must be crawlable and indexable)

Site speed is also important!

To summarise, mobile should be your number 1 priority!

14.05

Mobile first indexing – is it important?

Jon Myers, UK Search Personality of the Year 2017 and Chief Growth Officer at DeepCrawl tells us everything we need to know about The Mobile First Index: What, why and, more importantly, when!

Follow him at @Danny_Blackburn

14.00

Welcome back – we have loads more speakers this afternoon, so stay with us for a live update.

12.30

It’s beer o’clock – see you all after lunch!

12.00

What do people want and need from you as a brand? Danny says there are three layers of insight:

But, content doesn’t work unless it’s consumed by the right people. Danny says we need to think about 2 things:

CONTENT DISTRIBUTION – Pushing content to the audience via a blend of owned, earned and paid channels.
CONTENT DISCOVERY – Creating content in a specific way to make sure people find it when they’re looking.

As digital professionals, we need to understand the brands we’re working with, and how an audience interacts with them.

We can do this by looking performance insights/data; we need to be monitoring what works and what doesn’t – this will help inform a content strategy.

12.00

Next up is Danny Blackburn, content director at Stickyeyes and he’ll be talking about the link between great content marketing and getting to the top of the search results.

Complete Content: A new model to drive SEO success and much, much more…

Give him a follow on @Danny_Blackburn

11.30

Hannah’s job is to come up with ideas which people will share and journalists will want to write about, but where does she get her ideas from and how does she get links?

The answer to that question lies partially in the idea, and what she does afterwards.

Hannah explains that they key is creative thinking. For example, take the unsexy subject of contact lenses – how can this be turned into a fun subject?

She says there are plenty of ways – we just need to think outside of the box!

Hannah started thinking about stuff to do with vision and how we see the world. She then created a visual timed game and sent this to 2,000 survey respondents to find out who performs best at this type of puzzle to help gain coverage. She launched the piece in April 2017, and received coverage every single month, for 12 months.

Thanks to this insight, she discovered that the media had such an appetite for these kinds of puzzles!

So, what’s the point?

If you create something that’s genuinely valuable for journalists – you can get links and coverage! You just need to think creatively!

Be inspired…

You’ll find cool stuff (like awesome data sets) and you should keep hold of it and you’ll connect the dots eventually @hannah_bo_banna #searchleeds
— Pedro (@AgencyPedro) June 14, 2018

11.30

What Happens when a Werewolf bites a Goldfish?

Now, that is an interesting title – you’ve got our attention already!

Hannah Smith, Head of Creative at Verve Search will be talking about how to come up with creative ideas that achieve results, and will hopefully give us the answer as to what happens when a warewolf bites a goldfish.

Give her a follow on Twitter @hannah_bo_banna

11.15

Content marketing is getting harder!

So, we need to think more creatively, and in order to stay ahead of our competition we need to:

Diversify our objectives
Pimp our data
Become PR and brand experts
Become qualified business consultants
Nail creative execution

Kirsty says that we should be thinking about the following in the short term:

Ideas, not assets, are everything
Volume is imperative
Create assets cheaply

She also says that we need to know our brand inside out, and we should be asking the following questions regularly:

What are the 3 core objectives?
What is the value proposition?
What is the USP?
What is the consistent message?

Thanks for the insight, Kirsty! You were great

11.15

Content and links – how to do these without breaking the bank

Kirsty Hulse, founder of Manyminds will be answering the big question next!

Follow her at @Kirsty_Hulse

Right now on the main stage @Kirsty_Hulse talking content and links – and how to do it without breaking the bank #searchleeds pic.twitter.com/jVPTIEnuHl
— SearchLeeds (@SearchLeeds) 14 June 2018

10.25

Useless projects: Where AI meets human creativity

Rob McGowan from Edit is our third speaker of the day – Useless projects: Where AI meets human creativity

Give him a follow @Herd6

“If we remove the routine and the judgery, it will provide more time to develope new tools, products and solutions”. Especially enjoyed the talk from Rob McGowan this morning. The short film written entirely by #AI was incredibly eerie. #SearchLeeds @Branded_3 @SearchLeeds pic.twitter.com/tbzi7fQypS
— Luke Terzino (@UELukeT) 14 June 2018

10.21

Key takeaways from Purna

Don’t get too excited by voice search – chat bots are more useful!
Image search is becoming more intelligent

So, what is AI? Well, Purna sums this up perfectly!

She says, “search is becoming more intelligent and it is increasingly becoming the centerpiece of consumer engagement”. Now, more than ever, we need to deliver a rich understanding to put the right message in front of the user.

We need to research target audiences across the decision journey:

Refocus on what really counts: people
Right place and at precisely the right moment
Half of digital advertisers plan to increase spend on audience targeting this year
Measure and optimize performance easily

She goes on to explain that search is also becoming more visual. So, we need to think about visual search checklists:

Optimise images
…and feed
Structured data
XML sitemaps

Search is becoming more conversational – there’s been a huge increase in the amount of smart speakers sold, but we shouldn’t get too excited! Purna states that “70% of consumers have never used voice search to shop or search for products.” So, curb your enthusiam!

We need to pay attention to featured snippets and describer tokens (phrases)!

YES! A reasonable opinion on voice search! Voice search is only really used for informational terms, so just properly tag up and optimise your pages (for now…) #searchleeds @purnavirji pic.twitter.com/Fg6x9AU6m6
— John Jackson (@johnlukejack) June 14, 2018

10.20

09.59

Next, all things AI

We’re now onto our next speaker: Purna Virji, Senior Manager and Global Engagement for Microsoft.

Purna will be covering Intelligent search and intelligent assistants: Exploring the AI- Era of Search

Follower her on Twitter @purnavirji

09.51

J says that a lot of businesses and brands are still working in silos, and this is limiting interactions between us and the customer, resulting in a poor user experience.

This even happens in the digital industry/agencies – different teams have different KPIs and this can affect us working together in a more streamlined way.

Companies need believe in connectedness.When businesses create silos it takes away the ‘connectedness’ of an organisation and of people.

09.35

Ready. Steady. Go!

Our first speaker of the day is J. Schwan, Creative Digital Officer at St. Ives Group.

The future doesn’t exist in silos

J will be talking about his personal experience with fragmented customer journeys. When trying to seek answers to life’s problems online, he couldn’t find solutions in the digital space, resulting in him having to head to high street shops and call centers for answers – a poor user experience.

He explains what brands can do to overcome this issue.

09.30

We’re live

Branded3’s Strategy Director, Stephen Kenwright welcomes everyone to Search Leeds 2018.

09.30

Stage one about to kick off

Stay with us for live updates throughout the day

09.20

Welcome to SearchLeeds 2018! We’re about to kick off, you’re here with me, Steph Naylor, live blogging from Stage One.

If you’re following the conference here online, check out tweets from:

@SearchLeeds
@Branded_3
#searchleeds

]]>

SearchLeeds 2018: SISTRIX Technical SEO Stage Live Blog

Madeleine Ritzker — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 11:00:50 +0000

From mobile first to Mordor, we’ve covered a lot of technical territory here on Stage Two.

Thanks to all our speakers for their brilliant insight, and to all of you for joining us.

2019, here we come.

Thank you to all the attendees, sponsors and speakers from today! From the B3 crew @Branded_3 until next year… #SearchLeeds pic.twitter.com/9iLqo20t0q

— SearchLeeds (@SearchLeeds) June 14, 2018

16:50

“Google doesn’t like slow websites. Clients don’t like slow websites. So you have to resolve that.”

Craig says to use tools to conduct in-depth site speed testing.

Page load speed is key for UX and Google. Do what you can to trim down page size (looking at you, videos, images Javascript, CSS).

Follow Craig on Twitter @craigcampbell03

16:45

Technical SEO: what are the most common mistakes and how can we avoid them?

The answer is SEMRush. The tool has grown from a keyword research platform to something that can help us conduct in-depth audits and deliver helpful reporting for clients.

Craig uses SEMRuch to zone in on Coca-Cola – and reveals some shocking gaps, including:

Broken internal links
Duplicate content

Errors become visible quickly, so you can take action quickly.

Follow Craig on Twitter @craigcampbell03

16:35

So, there you have it. Users might be weird, but they can help SEOs spot things that might slip through the net – like outdated Twitter birds, annoying autoplay videos, and websites that make you say “oh, yuck!” Oliver says: welcome them to your fellowship, next time you go on a mission to conduct an audit.

We now welcome our final speaker of the day: Craig Campbell is an SEO Consultant and Trainer at his agency, CraigCambellSEO, and regular host on SEMRush webinars.

How to fix the most common technical SEO issues

Craig discusses how to find and fix the most common technical SEO issues that your site might be facing using SEMRush’s auditing tool. Step on in for actionable tips and advice about site speed optimisation, time to bite, using the correct SSL certificates, and more.

Follow Craig on Twitter @craigcampbell03

16:25

Lord of the Rings. SEO. Yes, they’re related.

In fact, according to Oliver, they have a lot in common.

(Bing + Yahoo = Merry and Pippin).

The Lord of the Serps has unmasked himself for your benefit here at Search Leeds.

If you hadn’t already noticed, SEOs are different.

“SEOs are weirdoes, and aren’t really like normal people. You guys are weirdoes!”

SEOs feel existential dread about Google. They’re obsessed about niche stuff like ‘nofollow and dofollow’.

Users are weird too, but they also have great insight.

They use standard devices
Unconventional software
They find obstacles
And they’re objective

So, we should listen to them.

Follow Oliver on Twitter @LordOfTheSERPs, @OliverBrett

16:25

When you made this account as a joke but now you’re on #SearchLeeds @sistrix Stage 2 at 16:10 today: pic.twitter.com/UdZeMzS7QW
— Lord of the SERPs (@LordOfTheSERPs) June 14, 2018

Follow Oliver on Twitter @LordOfTheSERPs, @OliverBrett

16:20

Why SEO wizards need user testing hobbits

Need we say more?

Oliver Brett leads a team of consultants at Screaming Frog by day and runs an SEO/LOTR-themed Twitter account by night. And he’s on Stage Two right now.

SEOs might be wizards when it comes to serving search engines, but sometimes you need the insight of a humble hobbit to help figure out what’s best for users. Oliver discusses how to bring UX into the auditing process to take your testing to the next level. What are you waiting for? Fly, you fools.

Follow Oliver on Twitter @LordOfTheSERPs, @OliverBrett

16:15

Julia’s essential checklist:

Check your server logs to see any unusual URLs being requested
Check Majestic for your indexed/linked to pages
Check Google Search Console for unusual queries, URLs, and crawl errors

So, what if you do get hacked?

“If you only take away one thing from this talk, let it be this: always have a clean backup.”

Make a clean backup after conducting a health check, when you’re sure your site is clean. Keep it somewhere safe.

What else?

“Act quick – but don’t panic.”

These are Julia’s tips:

Don’t delete anything until you know what’s happened
Update all passwords
Remove or update vulnerable elements
Check if your mail server is affected
Clean your SERPs (look for parasite pages)

Follow Julia on Twitter @IrishWonder

16:10

The truth is, we are vulnerable.

(More now than ever before).

Vulnerabilities are growing YoY (even this second, as Julia speaks).

So, what can you do?

Undergo a ‘health check’. It should be part of your regular site audits

What you include is system dependent, but think about:

What gets indexed?
Check for known vulnerabilities using reliable tools (like WPScan)
Remove unused plugins
Revoke unneeded access

Follow Julia on Twitter @IrishWonder

16:05

Julia is mythbusting.

SSL=Secure Site?

No!

SSL=Secure Connection.

“It has nothing to do with whether or not it can be hacked.”

Follow Julia on Twitter @IrishWonder

15:55

Why are we talking about security at a search related conference?

Why does security matter? What does it have to do with SEO and Digital Marketing?

Julia is going to tell us. (Hint: It’s not just because of GDPR).

“Security issues can give you SEO nightmares.”

Some of these include:

Ranking for keywords that have nothing to do with your site
Getting hacked

According to Google Webmaster Guidelines: You’re responsible for your own site. And if you don’t look after it, you might get a penalty.

“Nobody’s going to do this for you. Don’t rely on Google to help you with this.”

Because by the time you see a security warning, it might be too late.

Follow Julia on Twitter @IrishWonder

15:30

We’ve had a busy afternoon up here at Stage Two (ahem, standing room only at one point, ahem).

And a special thanks to Luke Carthy for stepping in last minute and saving the day with his outstanding lessons on the amazing things internal site search can do for you.

Join us for another lineup of brilliant talks to finish off a great day of technical revelations on Stage Two.

15:30

Join us at 15:45 on Stage Two to learn about

How to audit your site for security

With Julia Logan, SEO consultant at IrishWonder’s SEO Consulting.

Don’t worry, we’re not going to ramble on about GDPR (well, not too much). The only people who like security issues are hackers – and we don’t like hackers. Julia outlines simple things you can do to make your site more secure.

Follow Julia on Twitter @IrishWonder

15:15

But how does Google interpret all this?

Take yourself over to Google Search Console to find out. Rachel says to look into:

‘Google chose different canonical than user’ – Google thinks they’re duplicate pages.
‘Alternate pages with proper canonical tag’ – Google thinks these are duplicate pages.
‘Submitted URL not selected as canonical’ – Also seen as duplicates.
‘Duplicate page without canonical tag’ – Again, duplicates.

The best way to check – use the info query in the cache. Doing so will show you canonical URLs, so can see if a different URL has been indexed instead.

In summary:

“It’s in Google’s hands.”

But you should still do all you can to ensure Google handles things right.

Follow Rachel on Twitter @rachellcostello

15:05

Worth remembering: Parameter handling signals are stronger than canonical signals – @rachellcostello #SearchLeeds
— Luke Monaghan (@LukeTheMono) June 14, 2018

Follow Rachel on Twitter @rachellcostello

15:05

Some SEO for thought: “Parameter handling has been confirmed by John Mueller as a strong signal.”

There’s more to the story, but the jist is that canonicals are complicated. Rachel’s key takeaway:

“With website signals, there’s strength in numbers.”

Remember, Google looks at:

Canonicals
Internal linking
Parameter handling
Backlinks
Redirects
Sitemaps

Follow Rachel on Twitter @rachellcostello

15:00

“What powers do we have left as SEOs?”

It’s the question that inspired Rachel to dig into this topic. After all, if Google does all it says it does, what’s left for us to do?

To find the answer, Rachel asks some questions:

How does Google handle signals?
How can you test these signals?
And how can we see the end results?

Follow Rachel on Twitter @rachellcostello

14:55

Controversial closing note: Luke says be brave and don’t be afraid to massacre search URLs – after all, if you take the right steps you can always get them back if there’s a negative impact (but there won’t be.)

Next on Stage Two, we welcome Rachel Costello, Technical SEO Executive at DeepCrawl. She wants us to:

Stop confusing search engines with conflicting website signals!

Nobody can tolerate mixed signals – especially Google. And if your site is getting wires crossed, it can have a disastrous impact. Rachel discusses canonicalisation, pagination, hreflang and mobile alternates, discussing how to prioritise areas of your site and get things right.

Follow Rachel on Twitter @rachellcostello

14:50

So, what’s the solution?

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Figure out your Search URL issue (use tools like DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog, Google Search Console)
Do a report to find out just how many URLs Google is aware of.
Identify ‘link juice’ to search URLs
301 redirect worthy search backlinks (recycle)
Identify which URLs are generating good organic traffic and sales (reuse)
Prepare to lose or de-index useless URLs (reduce)
Don’t forget to nofollow, noindex search filter URLs
Tidy up your internal link structure

14:40

“I dated a redhead once.”

Not sure why it’s relevant, but it feels like an important thing to mention.

On a more familiar topic, Luke explains:

Why internal search SEO is essential

Category page urls play a minority role in terms of search but a majority role in terms of conversion and revenue

14:30

Key takeaway from Dave – don’t create content for search engines. Create content for users.

We now welcome Luke Carthy, Digital Manager at Mayflex, who is going to teac us

How to SEO the s* out of your internal site search**

Internal site search is a pivitol, but often neglected aspect of search. So Luke Carthy has decided to give it some much needed love and attention – find out how to get into your internal site search and make it into an SEO success.

14:25

“When in doubt, ‘just Google it’.”

Never stop looking for ways to optimise, Dave says. Conversion and Ranking should go hand in hand. Don’t sacrifice content for other elements.

—

Follow Dave on Twitter @davefreeman

14:20

So, how do we create the right content?

Build a picture of your consumers.

Who are they?
What are their problems?
What challenges to they face?
Where do they hang out online?

And then use other data to address their needs:

Paid search keyword insight
On-site search data
Google Keyword Planner
Ahrefs Content Explorer
Competitor research

—

Follow Dave on Twitter @davefreeman

14:15

What makes Dave want to hit his head against the wall?

Too often we ask:

“How do we optimise content for search engines.”

When we should ask?

“How do we optimise content for consumers.”

How do we do it?

Adapt to your customers.
Execute the great ideas your team has.

“There’s a lot of bad content out there – we need to focus on creating good content.”

—

Follow Dave on Twitter @davefreeman

14:05

Everything in SEO is related to content.

“Content really is fundamental to anything you do.”

Your content must succeed at every stage:

Attract click through
Suit the Device its being accessed on
Engage with users
And Convert them

—

Follow Dave on Twitter @davefreeman

14:05

A massive thanks to our speakers this morning.

Here’s to another afternoon of tasty technical SEO! Join us for Dave Freeman’s talk, starting now!

—

Follow Dave on Twitter @davefreeman

12:40

It’s time to absorb all that over a sandwich.

We return after lunch, at 2:05pm with Dave Freeman, Group Head of SEO at Treatwell and columnist for Search Engine Land. Head up to Stage Two for:

Creating knockout on-site content by simply understanding your consumers

Content plays a role in everything in SEO – directly or indirectly, it helps us attract, engage, and convert users. And so, it must be great. Dave discusses how understanding your users is key to creating content that delivers traffic and conversions.

Follow Dave on Twitter @davefreeman

12:35

Dawn says information overload is a real issue. There is too much content. People are addicted to research.

So how do we cut through the noise?

“Nobody puts SEO in a corner.”

We need to think apprehensively. Plan for Iceberg Searchers, who think that everything in the ‘read more’ is much the same as what’s on the surface. Plan for Reasonable Surfers who think ‘what you see is what you get’ and won’t scroll for more.

How?

Lay out your information better:

Group your content
Summarise important things at the top
Try a table of contents
Embrace interactive web design
Use proximity to your advantage (people will connect the dots)
Imagery is your friend

And think like Ernest Hemingway – less is more.

—

Follow Dawn on Twitter@dawnieando

12:15

Dawn discusses new ways we’re searching using subordinate systems – these are your Alexas, your Siris, your Google Homes.

To get a step ahead, we need to work even harder to understand context and need – and use it to help users before they ask to be helped.

“It’s going to rain in Leeds today – bring your umbrella!”

—

Follow Dawn on Twitter@dawnieando

12:15

Dawn gets theoretical and discusses Mizzaro’s Framework of Relevance.

Touching on information resources, user problem, time, and components.

—

Follow Dawn on Twitter@dawnieando

12:10

Kristine’s key takeaways – you’re the interpreter, so talk to Google the same way we talk to each other: natural and conversational language. Add semantic mark-up (structured data via schema). Be the voice amongst the noise that helps Google understand what the hell you’re talking about.

We now welcome Dawn Anderson, SEO Consultant and Search Strategist at Move it Marketing and trainer/lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.

What lies beneath – ‘The Iceberg Approach’

Hemingway meets Search as Dawn discusses how to say more with less and get through to both users and search engines. She looks below the surface of the site and touches on methods for passing themed ‘equivalence’.

—

Follow Dawn on Twitter@dawnieando

12:00

The Knowledge Graph is Google’s database.

This lets you search for things, people, places that Google knows about. Think people, places, sports scores.

“If it’s a noun, it’s going to be in the Knowledge Graph.”

Nouns = Entities.

And if Google can understand entities, it can move from sight to sound. At the moment it’s text based, but we’re working towards natural language processing (“hello, Google.”)

This means transitioning from the Knowledge Graph to the Answer Engine.

Kristine notes we’re moving from Search to Answers – sometimes, Google delivers the answer before you even know the question.

Cue Hummingbird – adds a semantic layer to algorithms, helping Google understand context and intent so it can deliver us better results.

—

Follow Kristine on Twitter @schachin

11:55

In the beginning there was a large-scale hypertextual web search engine…

And that became Google.

In 2015, there were 63k search queries every second.

That’s a lot of data – that’s big data.

Kristine notes we began with unstructured data: you know it – text based, keywords at the top (hello, black hat SEO).

But then there was too much data. Which meant Google needed another way to organise and understand it was seeing.

Hello, Knowledge Graph. Hello, Semantic Search.

—

Follow Kristine on Twitter @schachin

11:55

In the beginning there was a large-scale hypertextual web search engine…

And that became Google.

In 2015, there were 63k search queries every second.

That’s a lot of data – that’s big data.

Kristine notes we began with unstructured data: you know it – text based, keywords at the top (hello, black hat SEO).

But then there was too much data. Which meant Google needed another way to organise and understand it was seeing.

Hello, Knowledge Graph. Hello, Semantic Search.

—

Follow Kristine on Twitter @schachin

11:45

Fili’s key takeaway: structural data is all about helping Google understand your content. And what could be more important than that?

We now welcome Kristine Schachinger,CEO and founder of Sites Without Walls.

Entities, Search, and Rank Brain: How it works and why it matters

Entity-based search – what is it? What are entities? Where do they come from? And how does Google use them? Kristine answers all, explaining how Rank Brain ties into it and what SEOs need to know.

—

Follow Kristine on Twitter @schachin

11:45

Fili’s key takeaway: structural data is all about helping Google understand your content. And what could be more important than that?

We now welcome Kristine Schachinger,CEO and founder of Sites Without Walls.

Entities, Search, and Rank Brain: How it works and why it matters

Entity-based search – what is it? What are entities? Where do they come from? And how does Google use them? Kristine answers all, explaining how Rank Brain ties into it and what SEOs need to know.

—

Follow Kristine on Twitter @schachin

11:40

Fili asks: What’s wrong with this picture?

Hint: a lot.

“The tools can’t be trusted – you need to use your eyes.”

Follow Fili on Twitter @filiwiese

11:25

From articles to recipes, there are many different schema you can take advantage of, depending on your site.

Fili asks: Ever thought about data as schema?

Getting schema right can help your CTR and make you stand out from the other options that users are facing.

But how to do it?

Google Tag Manager – great way to test a schema, but not a long term solution.

“Can be good to test, but I wouldn’t rely on this long term.”

Follow Fili on Twitter @filiwiese

11:10

Thanks for everyone who has joined us this morning on Stage 2! Not to boast, but we’ve had quite the turnout.

Come join us for our next round of speakers, starting with Fili Wiese, of Search Brothers, ex-Google engineer and expert at all things SEO.

At 11:15, he’ll be delivering his talk: Structured data explained

With Fili, it’s all about actionable SEO tips that will help you see results. Whatever experience level you’re at, you’ll learn about structured data and how to make it work for you.

—

Follow Fili on Twitter @filiwiese

10:50

We shouldn’t have to remind you, but we will.

“If you’re not launching a mobile-friendly site in 2018, you’ve got some serious issues.”

Test for issues – think about everything from font size to page speed.

Follow Steve on Twitter @SteveChambers

10:45

Steve discusses offensive and defensive actions you can take to make sure your migration goes as smoothly as possible.

Plan accordingly – ensure there’s the correct resource allocated and everything fits into your wider workload.

Create a checklist beforehand and check it (duh) to stop things from slipping through the net (looking at you, Robot.txt, redirect loop, and log files).

And, an insider tip:

“Never plan a migration on a Friday!”

Follow Steve on Twitter @SteveChambers