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Information Architecture for SEO – Whiteboard Friday

Information Architecture for SEO Whiteboard

Posted by randfish

It wasn't too long ago that there was significant tension between information architects and SEOs; one group wanted to make things easier for humans, the other for search engines. That line is largely disappearing, and there are several best practices in IA that can lead to great benefits in search. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains what they are and how we can benefit from them.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat a little bit about information architecture, and specifically how you can organize the content of your website in such a fashion to make information architecture help your SEO and your rankings and how search engines interpret your pages and the links between those.

I want to start by talking broadly about IA and the interaction with SEO. IA is designed to say, "Hey, we want to help web users accomplish their goals on the website quickly and easily." There are many more broad things around that, but basically that's the concept.

This actually is not in conflict at all, should almost never be in conflict, even a little bit, with the goals that we have around SEO. In the past, this was not always true, and unfortunately in the past some mythology got created around the things that we have to worry about that could conflict between SEO and information architecture.

Here we've got a page that's optimal for IA, and it's got this top navigation and left side navigation, some footers, maybe a big image at the front and some text. Great, fine. Then, we have this other version that I'm not going to call it optimal for SEO, because it's actually not optimal for SEO. It is instead SEO to the max! "At the Tacoma Dome this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!"

The problem is this is kind of taking SEO much too far. It's no longer SEO, it's SE . . . I don't know, ridiculousness.

The idea would be things like we know that keyword rich anchors are important, and linking internally we want to be descriptive. We know that as people use those terms and links other places on the web, that might help our rankings. So instead of making the navigation obvious for users, we're going to make it keyword stuffed for SEO. This makes no sense anymore, as I'm sure, hopefully, all of you know.

Text high up on the page, this actually does mean something. It used to mean a little more than it does. So maybe we're going to take oh, yeah, we want to have that leader image right up at the top because that grabs people's attention, and the headline flows nicely into that image. But for SEO purposes, we want the text to be even higher. That doesn't make any sense either.

Even if there is some part of Google's algorithm, Bing's algorithm, or Baidu's algorithm, that says, "Oh, text higher up on the page is a teensy little spattering more meaningful," this is totally overwhelmed and dwarfed by the fact that SEO today cares a ton about engagement. If people come to this page and are less engaged, are more likely to click the Back button, are less likely to stay here and consume the content and link to it and share it and all these kinds of things, it's going to lose out even to the slightly less optimized version of the page over here, which really does grab people's attention.

If your IA folks and your usability folks and your testing is showing you that that leader image up top there is grabbing people's attention and is working, don't break it by saying, "Oh, but SEO demands content higher on the page."

Likewise, if you have something where you say, "Hey, in order to flow or sculpt the link equity around these things, we don't want to link to this page and this page. We do want to link to these things. We want make sure that we've got a very keyword heavy and link heavy footer so that we can point to all the places we need to point to, even though they're not really for users. It's mostly for engines. Also, BS. One of the things that modern engines are doing is they're kind of looking and saying, "Hey, if no one uses these links to navigate internally on a site, we're not going to take them into consideration from a ranking perspective either."

They have lots of modeling and machine learning and algorithmic ways to do that, but basic story is make links for users that search engines will also care about, because that's the only thing that search engines really do want to care about. So IA and SEO, shouldn't be in conflict.

Important information architecture best practices

Now that we know this, we can move on to some important IA best practices, generally speaking IA best practices that are also SEO best practices and that most of the time, 99.99% of the time work really well together.

1. Broad-to-narrow organization

The first one, in general, it's the case that you want to do broad to narrow organization of your content. I'll show you what I mean.

Let's say that I've got a website about adorable animals, a particularly fun one this week, and on my adorable animals page I've got some subsections, sub-pages, one on the slow loris, which of course is super adorable, and hedgehogs, also super adorable. Then getting even more detailed from there, I have particular pages on hedgehogs in military uniforms -- that page is probably going to bring down the Internet because it will be so popular -- and hedgehogs wearing ridiculous hats. These are two sub-pages of my hedgehog page. My hedgehog page, subset of my adorable animals page.

This is generally speaking how I want to do things. I probably would not want to organize, at least from the top level down in my actual architecture for my site, I probably wouldn't want to say adorable animals and here's a list of hedgehogs in military uniforms, a list of hedgehogs wearing ridiculous hats, a list of slow loris licking itself. No. I want to have that organization of broad to more narrow to more narrow.

This makes general sense. By the way, for SEO purposes it does help if I link back and forth one level in each case. So for my hedgehog page, I do want to link down to my hedgehogs in military uniforms page, and I also want to link up to my adorable animals page.

You don't have to do it with exactly these keyword anchor text phrases, that kind of stuff. Just make sure that you are linking. If you want, you can use breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are very kind of old-fashioned, been around since the late '90s, sort of style system for showing off links, and that can work really well for some websites. It doesn't have to be the only way things can work though.

2. Link to evergreen pages from fresh content

When you're publishing fresh content is when I think many SEOs get into a lot of trouble. They're like, "Well, I have a blog that does all this, but then I have the regular parts of my site that have all of my content or my product pages or my detailed descriptions. How do I make these two things work together?"

This has actually become much easier but different in the last five or six years. It used to be the case that we would talk, in the SEO world, about not having keyword cannibalization, meaning if I've got an adorable animals page in my main section of my website, I don't actually want to publish a blog post called "New Adorable Animals to Add to My Collection," because now I'm competing with myself and I'm diluting my link juice.

Actually, this has gotten way easier. Google, and Bing as well, have become much more intelligent about identifying what's new content, what's old, sort of evergreen content, and they'll promote one. You even sometimes have an opportunity to get both in there. Certainly if you're posting fresh content that gets into Google news, the blog or the news section can be an opportunity to get in Google news. The old one can be an opportunity to just stay in the search results for a long time period. Get ting links to one doesn't actually dilute your ranking ability for the other because of how Google is doing much more topic focused associations around entire websites.

So this can be actually a really good thing. However, that being said, you do still want to try and link back to the most relevant, evergreen kind of original page. If I publish a new blog post that has some aggregation of hedgehogs in military uniforms from the Swiss Naval Academy -- I don't know why Switzerland would have a navy since they're landlocked -- I would probably want to take that hedgehogs in Swiss military uniforms and link back to my original one here.

I wouldn't necessarily want to do the same thing and link over here, unless I decide, hey, a lot of people who are interested in this are going to want to check out this article too, in which case it's fine to do that.

I would worry a little bit that sometimes people bias to quantity over quality of links internally when they're publishing their blog content or publishing these detail pages and they think, "Oh, I need to link to everything that's possibly relevant." I wouldn't do that. I would actually link to the things that you are most certain that a high number, a high percent of the users who are enjoying or visiting or consuming one page, one piece of information are really going to want in their journey. If you don't have that confidence, I wouldn't necessarily put them in there. I wouldn't try and stack those up with tons of extra links.

Like I said, you don't need to worry about keyword cannibalization. If you want to publish a new article every week about hedgehogs in military uniforms, you go for it. That's a great blog.

3. Make sub-pages if intent is unique, combine if not

Number three, and the last one here, make these sub-pages when there's unique intent. Information architecture is actually really good about this in practice. They basically say, "Hey, why would we create a new page if we already have a page that serves the same goals and same intent?" One of the reasons that people used to say, "Well, I know that we have that, but it doesn't do a great job of targeting phrase A and phrase B, which both have the same intent but aren't going to rank for those two separate phrases A and B."

That's also not the case anymore in the SEO world. Google and Bing have both become incredibly good at sorting out searcher intent and matching those to the pages and the keywords that fit those intents, even if the keyword match isn't perfect one-to-one exact.

So if I've got a page that's on slow lorises yawning and another one on slow lorises that are sleepy, are those really all that different? Is the intent of the searcher very different? When someone is searching for a sleepy loris, are they looking for one that's probably yawning? Yeah. You know what? I would say these are the same intent. I would make a single page for them.

However, over here I've got a slow loris in a sombrero and a slow loris wearing a top hat. Now, these are two very different kinds of head wear, and people who are searching for sombreros are not going to want to find a slow loris wearing a top hat. They might want to see a cross link over between them. They might say, "Oh, top hat wearing slow lorises are also interesting to me." But this is very specific intent, different from this one. Two different intents means two different pages.

That's how I do all of my information architecture when it comes to a keyword and SEO perspective. You want to go broad to narrow. You want to not worry too much about publishing fresh content, but you do want to link back to the original evergreen. You want to make sure that if there are pages or intents that are exactly the same, you make a single page. If they're intents that are different, you have different pages targeting those different intents.

All right everyone, look forward to the comments, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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By |December 19th, 2014|MOZ|0 Comments
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How to Repurpose the Best Content Formats of 2014

Posted by Amanda_Gallucci

The past year, major publishers have run the full gamut from listicles with clickbait headlines to well-researched, in-depth storytelling. Each format worked for different audiences and contexts, and as publishers repeatedly tested new types of content, they found several winning combinations.

By taking a look at the strategy behind why some of the most popular content styles of 2014 performed so well, brands can learn to repurpose and utilize these formats for their own content.

The local snapshot

Whether taking the form of a list, interactive map, or article, content that focused in on a certain segment of the population, or compares and contrasts diverse segments, made up some of the most widely shared and discussed content.

Example

The New York Times created a map that represented America's palate by showing the most searched for Thanksgiving recipe in every state: Thanksgiving Recipes Googled in Every State.

Why it works

The more closely content is personally tied to the reader, the more they are invested in it, so content that is focused on a particular area or demographic has a high appeal to the people in that group. People feel one of two ways about this type of content: either they find it to be a spot-on representation of their community, or they starkly disagree with how they were perceived. In both cases, the opinion is strong and people want to share with others about either the content's accuracy or their reasons why the author didn't get it right. Moreover, content that pits different places or groups against each other further increases a person's desire to defend their loyalty to their group, as well as strikes up curiosity and conversations when people are genuinely surprised to find out how different they are from others.

How to spin it

Dig into your sales data and see if you can find any interesting trends as far as different groups of people favoring different products or services. You can also use social engagement tools and social listening to find interesting patterns in online behavior. Depending on the type of insights you discover, you can decide if a map or another type of graphic makes the most sense to present your findings.

Objections

Investing a great deal of resources into producing a piece of content aimed at only one group can seem to be less of an opportunity than something all encompassing, however sometimes when you try to cover your whole audience at once, you end up reaching no one on a deep enough level. Try out both hyperlocal content and content that compares different local segments to see which performs best.

The success formula

Whether giving tips from specific celebrities or business leaders, or rounding up the commonalities between "every great leader" or "all accomplished entrepreneurs," content that claimed to give the secret steps to success was quite popular. Just a step up from a listicle, these articles paired first-person accounts and statistics with helpful tips.

Example

Forbes turned research about how people deal with stress into tips on how to avoid it: How Successful People Squash Stress.

Why it works

People want to be successful and turn to informational and self-help content in order to better themselves. Pairing tips with people's real stories or data largely increases the credibility of the advice, giving the readers more reason to believe that the content can help them achieve their own success.

How to spin it

Make the success formula specific to your niche. Go beyond interviewing thought leaders about their backgrounds and general advice. Q&As with bright individuals don't always produce high traffic and social shares because while the person answering questions is successful, the questions and answers don't produce any concrete takeaways from which others can learn. Compile actual schedules and to-do lists that show how effective workers spend their time, describe what tools a professional in your space uses to accomplish certain tasks, or explain the story behind the numbers that show a group or company's growth. Peel away any generic and clichéd recommendations to reveal the details that make up a repeatable method other people in the field can use.

Objections

Sometimes the "steps" in posts like these are overly simplistic and not completely fleshed out. For instance, "start by setting goals," on its own has very little value and it's something that people have heard before. Giving more specific examples about the types of goals to set, tips and tricks of how to set obtainable goals or keep track of goals, or a behind-the-scenes look at a successful individual or brand's goals with the details of how they were achieved can turn advice into useful content.

The nonfiction story

While micro content may have excelled in 2014, there were also many notable long-form pieces of strong journalism. Publishers sought to put names and faces to cold facts about poverty, crime, and other important issues that are sometimes glazed over as mere statistics. The combination of detailed accounts and telling photography or data visualizations alongside careful research brought previously hidden subjects to light.

Example

Newsweek told the story of what really happens in one of the most dangerous cities of America in Murder Town USA (aka Wilmington, Delaware).

Why it works

Powerful storytelling will always be compelling. Humanizing facts makes people take interest because it allows them to relate and moves them to feel a certain way.

How to spin it

Start by asking questions about data patterns and doing research to see if you can determine the source of unique trends. This doesn't have to involve extensive reporting; one interview with a person who has a unique point of view can be all you need to tell a remarkable story.

Objections

In-depth stories are only worth the reader's time investment if the author has something interesting to share, so this format is not easy to produce consistently in every subject. It can be a risk to take the time needed to produce something on such a grand scale only for it to not to gain traction. A big piece of content like this should not be attempted unless the idea is vetted among people in your circle of influence and there is a large enough promotional strategy around it to help it take off.

The crowdsourced list

The latest trend with publishers like BuzzFeed and Huffington Post is listicle posts that round up the funniest/saddest/most absurd stories from different threads on Reddit or other forums. Editors read through a thread and select what they deem to be the 10+ best posts under that topic, and publish the list either as is or including new images and light commentary. BuzzFeed has also taken this a step further and created posts that are simply open-ended questions people can answer for the chance to be featured in a follow-up post that includes the top answers.

Example

BuzzFeed turned the Ask Reddit question "What is the most George Constanza-esque reason you broke up with someone?" into this post: The 32 Most Ridiculous Reasons Real Couples Have Broken Up.

Why it works

Like any listicle, this content is bite-sized, organized, and easy to digest. It also saves people time from reading through mediocre stories if they were to read through the entire forum thread themselves, or helps them discover this type of content in the first place if they aren't a regular Redditor or forum user. If the editor accurately picks the most interesting posts to include, the content is quite informative and/or entertaining, making it highly shareable.

How to spin it

Create your own version of the crowdsourced listicle by collecting user generated questions, testimonials, or relevant experiential stories. These tidbits can be used for a blog post or combined with visuals to make an interesting SlideShare. Whether openly asking questions on social media to increase engagement and start conversations, or sending out a survey, there are plenty of ways to get shareable information from your audience.

Objections

While creating a list of other people's responses might appear lazy, having an eye for what people will enjoy reading and taking the time to sift through endless threads and posts is still work. No, not every brand should be emulating the BuzzFeed and Huffington Post "quick content" listicle style, however disregarding it as low quality can also be a mistake. A look at any of BuzzFeed's sponsored content case studies shows that the publisher can create tremendous brand lift, especially in the millennial segment. Quality should be viewed in the eyes of the reader, and so when listicles like these are getting many thousands of views and social shares, they should be seen as inherently valuable to at least a certain group of people.

Content before format

While format is important in each of the above cases, none of these pieces would have succeeded had they not been backed with substance. Each example includes elements that make up strong content:

  1. Use existing resources. While each of these pieces of content was unique, they all pulled from existing content or data sources. Being creative with what's already available is a huge resource saver as well as a great way to include content and data to which people already have a connection.
  2. Get specific. All content is better when it's backed up with examples and stories from real people and places. Details are what bring stories to life and make them memorable.
  3. Appeal to emotions. Whether you want to make someone laugh, stroke their ego, or raise concern, every piece of content should be tied to a goal of making the reader feel something. People have little motivation to engage with content that hasn't altered their mood or opinion.

As you begin to slate content for 2015, keep an open mind for trying out new formats and experimenting with these styles that have proved effective. With the right combination of short and long-form content, you can reach all parts of your audience while balancing your resources.


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By |December 18th, 2014|MOZ|0 Comments
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Location is Everything: Local Rankings in Moz Analytics

local keywords moz analytics

Posted by MatthewBrown

Today we are thrilled to launch local rankings as a feature in Moz Analytics, which gives our customers the ability to assign geo-locations to their tracked keywords. If you're a Moz Analytics customer and are ready to jump right in, here's where you an find the new feature within the application:

Not a Moz Analytics customer? You can take the new features for a free spin...

One of the biggest SEO developments of the last several years is how frequently Google is returning localized organics across a rapidly increasing number of search queries. It's not just happening for "best pizza in Portland" (the answer to that is Apizza Scholls, by the way). Searches like "financial planning" and "election guide" now trigger Google's localization algorithm:

local search results election guide

This type of query underscores the need to track rankings on a local level. I'm searching for a non-localized keyword ("election guide"), but Google recognizes I'm searching from Portland, Oregon so they add the localization layer to the result.

Local tends to get lost in the shuffle of zoo animal updates we've seen from Google in the last couple of years, but search marketers are coming around to realize the 2012 Venice update was one of the most important changes Google made to the search landscape. It certainly didn't seem like a huge deal when it launched; here's how Google described Venice as part of the late lamented monthly search product updates they used to provide:

  • Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename "Venice"] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

Seems innocent enough, right? What the Venice update actually kicked off was a long-term relationship between local search results (what we see in Google local packs and map results) and the organic search results that, once upon a time, existed on their own. "Localized organics," as they are known, have been increasingly altering the organic search landscape for keywords that normally triggered "generic" or national rankings. If you haven't already read it, Mike Ramsey's article on how to adjust for the Venice update remains one of the best strategic looks at the algorithm update.

This jump in localized organic results has prompted both marketers and business owners to track rankings at the local level. An increasing number of Moz customers have been requesting the ability to add locations to their keywords since the 2012 Venice update, and this is likely due to Google expanding the queries which trigger a localized result. You asked for it, and today we're delivering. Our new local rankings feature allows our customers to track keywords for any city, state, or ZIP/postal code.

Geo-located searches

We can now return rankings based on a location you specify, just like I set my search to Portland in the example above. This is critical for monitoring the health of your local search campaigns, as Google continues to fold the location layer into the organic results. Here's how it looks in Moz Analytics:

tracking local keyword ranking

A keyword with a location specified counts against your keyword limit in Moz Analytics just like any other keyword.

The location being tracked will also be displayed in your rankings reports as well as on the keyword analysis page:

local keyword difficulty

The local rankings feature allows you to enter your desired tracking location by city, state, neighborhood, and zip or postal code. We provide neighborhood-level granularity via dropdown for the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The dropdown will also provide city-level listings for other countries. It's also possible to enter a location of your choice not on the list in the text box. Fair warning: We cannot guarantee the accuracy of rankings in mythical locations like Westeros or Twin Peaks, or mythical spellings like Pordland or Los Andules.

An easy way to get started with the new feature is to look at keywords you are already tracking, and find the ones that have an obvious local intent for searchers. Then add the neighborhood or city you are targeting for the most qualified searchers.

What's next?

We will be launching local rankings functionality within the Moz Local application in the first part of 2015, which will provide needed visibility to folks who are mainly concerned with Local SEO. We're also working on functionality to allow users to easily add geo-modifiers to their tracked keywords, so we can provide rankings for "health club Des Moines" alongside tracking rankings for "health clubs" in the 50301 zip code.

Right now this feature works with all Google engines (we'll be adding Bing and Yahoo! later). We'll also be keeping tabs on Google's advancements on the local front so we can provide our customers with the best data on their local visibility.

Please let us know what you think in the comments below! Customer feedback, suggestions, and comments were instrumental into both the design and prioritization of this feature.


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

By |December 17th, 2014|MOZ|0 Comments
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Your Start-to-Finish Guide to Using Google’s Disavow Tool

Google disavow warning

Posted by MarieHaynes

Have you used Google's disavow tool? You might want to. If you have been actively involved in SEO for your website over the last few years, there is a good chance that you have unnatural links pointing to your site. These can hurt you in the eyes of Google's Penguin algorithm. Or, in some cases they can even get you a manual unnatural links penalty.

In this article we will talk about some very practical things that will help you when using the disavow tool. These tips should help you whether you are an experienced SEO or a small business owner who is trying to clean up a few unnatural links.

What is the disavow tool?

Introduced in October of 2013, the disavow tool is Google's way of allowing you to ask Google not to count certain links that point to your site. You can find the tool here. And here is Google's documentation on how to use the tool.

The scariest part of this documentation is this:

Using the disavow tool incorrectly can hurt you. You should only be disavowing links that you know were made with the intention of manipulating Google's results. Many articles have been written to help site owners decide which links are unnatural. But, there are not many articles written that take you through the process of auditing and disavowing your links from start to finish.

My hope is that this article will help answer any questions you have about using Google's disavow tool. If there is something that I haven't covered, then leave a comment below and I will do my best to answer.

Creating an audit spreadsheet

There are many services out there that can give you a list of your links. Some of these are great resources for organizing your links into a manageable format. I'm not a fan of services that try to audit your links for you as I believe that manually reviewing each link is necessary. But, some of these tools may be useful when it comes to putting a link auditing spreadsheet together. This Moz post contains a good review of many of the tools that are out there.

If you would like to create your own list of backlinks rather than using a tool or a program, then here is what I would recommend:

First, download your links from all available sources

You will want to start by downloading your links from Webmaster Tools. When you go to Search Traffic --> Links to your site --> More, you'll see this:

downloading links

Download both the sample links and the latest links.

Disavow Tip: If you have a site that has more than 1,000 linking domains, sometimes you can get more links from Webmaster Tools by downloading the sample list of links daily for a few days.

I would also recommend downloading links from the following sources:

  • majestic.com - Majestic has an option where you can get your links for free if you follow steps to verify your site. It's definitely worth it.
  • opensiteexplorer.org - This is Moz's tool. It won't give you as many links as Majestic, but occasionally you can find some links in there that are not in the other sources.
  • ahrefs.com - This is a paid option. In my opinion, it is worth the money. I will often get links reported in ahrefs that are not found in any of the other sources.

Combine the links into one big spreadsheet

As you get your spreadsheet from each source, find the column that contains the url of the sites linking to you. Copy this entire column into a new spreadsheet. You can do this in Excel or in Google Docs. In the last year or so, Google Docs has gotten much better at handling large amounts of data. As such, the directions I'm going to give in this tutorial are for use in Google Docs as not everyone may have access to Excel. If you have a Google login or a Gmail account you have access to Google Docs.

You'll end up with a big spreadsheet containing every link reported by each of the tools. At this point, this spreadsheet will contain a lot of duplication, but don't worry, we will deal with this soon.

(Note: It's not a bad idea to also include other columns that may help you with your audit such as the anchor text or nofollowed status, but for the sake of simplicity in this tutorial, we will just include the urls.)

Break these urls down to the subdomain level

Create a new column to the left of your urls. At the top type in the following formula:

=left(B1,find("/",B1,9)-1)

Then, highlight column A and press CTRL-D. This will fill the formula down the column and you will end up with something that looks like this:

url audit

Now, highlight column A and we'll ask the spreadsheet to convert the formula results to values. You need to do this in order to be able to copy and paste in this column. To do this, do CTRL-C to copy and then select Edit --> Paste Special --> Paste Values Only.

Now we're going to use the Find and Replace feature to break these down to the subdomain level. Keep column A highlighted and click Edit --> Find and Replace, and type in http://. Leave the replace field blank and press "Replace All".

removing http from url audit

Now do the same thing for the following phrases:

http://

www.

Don't forget the period after "www."!

Once this is complete, then column A contains the domains/subdomains of each url.

list of domains and subdomains

De-duplicate so you just have one link from each domain

Now what we are going to to is dedupe this list so that we just have one link from each domain. Most spreadsheets have a dedupe function built in. However, I have found that when you are dealing with a large number of rows, this will often crash the spreadsheet, so what I do is first, sort column A using alphabetical order, and then create a new column to the left of my domains and add the following formula:

=if(B1=B2,"duplicate","unique")

Copy this down so that the spreadsheet will now show you which entries are duplicates. You can then filter this column to show only the duplicates and delete each of these rows.

What you will be left with is one url from each domain linking to you.

Audit!

Now you need to visit each url on your spreadsheet and make a decision on whether or not you should keep links from this domain or disavow. On your spreadsheet, mark each url as either "disavow" or "keep":

disavow audit

In some cases, I'll mark some links as "debatable" and then review them again once I have seen all of the links in a link profile. Sometimes there are patterns of unnatural linking that only become visible after reviewing a good portion of the backlinks.

Here are the questions that I would ask when looking at each link:

  • Was this link made solely for SEO purposes?
  • Does this link truly, honestly have the possibility of directing clients your way?
  • Would you be worried if a Google employee or a competitor saw this link?

Disavow tip: When Google penalizes a site, or affects it algorithmically because of unnatural links, their goal is to demote sites who have been actively cheating. Every site has weird looking links that make you think, "Where the heck did that come from?" But there is no need to go disavowing everything that you don't recognize. Penguin will not affect a site just because it has some odd looking links.

If you're having a hard time deciding which links to disavow, then here are some resources that give more advice on how to make disavow decisions:

After reading those, if you are still unsure about the majority of your links and whether or not they should be disavowed, then it may be best to hire someone who is experienced in disavow work to do this audit for you.

Making your disavow file

Add "domain:" in front of the domains

Once you have finished assessing each link, you'll want to filter your disavow column so that you just see the links that you have decided to disavow.

disavow or keep links

Then, create a new sheet on your spreadsheet, copy your domains column and paste it into this new sheet:

url spreadsheet

Now we're going to add "domain:" in front of each domain name.

Disavow tip: You ALWAYS want to disavow on the domain level. If you disavow on the url level, you run a very high risk of missing bad links. For example, if you are disavowing a link on http://www.example.com/article.html, that same link may also exist on http://www.example.com/articles/ and http://www.example.com/tag/links, and http://www.example.com/article.html?utm=fb and so on.

To add "domain:" in front of each domain name, type the following formula into B1:

="domain:"&A1

Copy this formula down the entire column. Then, as before, do a copy and then paste special --> paste as values.

Now you've got your disavow directives in column B:

domail list

Make a text file

Your disavow file has to be a .txt file in UTF-8 format or 7-bit ASCII. There are a few ways that you can do this. On my Mac, what I do is open TextEdit, copy and paste my "domain:example.com" column (column B), and then click "Format" --> "Make plain text". I then save this as a .txt file.

Another option that works well is to create a new Google Doc document, copy the disavow directives into this document and then click "File" --> "Download As" --> "Plain text".

Disavow tip: There are many other ways to make a .txt file. But sometimes these files create odd characters that can throw errors when you file the file. If you are getting odd errors once you file, then try creating your text file using the Google Doc method mentioned above. This seems to be the most reliable way to produce a text file that Google won't reject.

What about comments?

I have seen disavow files that look like this: comments in disavow doc

You can leave a comment in your disavow file by starting a line with a "#". However, no Google employee will look at your disavow file. It is completely machine processed. Comments are there just for your own use. I will insert comments where it might be useful for me when I'm editing the disavow file in the future. For example, I might say the following:

#The following links were disavowed on December 16, 2014. These links are ones that we know are low quality directory links.

Filing your disavow

To file your disavow file, go to the disavow tool, and select your site from the dropdown list.

filing a link disavow

Click "disavow links" and then "disavow links" again and then "choose file". This is where you will upload the .txt file that we just created.

If you've been successful, then you'll see something that looks like this:

successful link disavow

But, you may find that you have errors:

errors in link disavow

Common errors

Here are some things to look for if you have an error message:

  • If you have typed "domain:http://www.example.com", you need to remove the http://www.
  • Sometimes the backlink tools will give you domains with odd characters in them that the disavow tool doesn't like. For example, sometimes ahrefs.com will give me domains that look like this:
_¼_¡_á_ü_____ü__„â_µ„Û___µ„â.„Û„ã.com

If I try to disavow domain:_¼_¡_á_ü_____ü__„â_µ„Û___µ„â.„Û„ã.com, that's going to throw errors. These domains never resolve. I just delete them from my disavow.

  • Look for domains with ports attached. For example, you may see domain:example.com:8080 on your list. Just remove the :8080. A colon will cause your disavow to throw an error.

As mentioned above, if you are getting errors and you can't figure out why, try formatting your file with a Google Doc and saving as a .txt. This usually works for me.

Modifying your disavow file

If you have unnatural links, then it is a really good idea to do regular checks of your backlinks. I have several clients for which I do monthly backlink audits and even though they are not currently building links, each month I will see a good number of new unnatural links. Many of these are old links from as early as 2006 that are just surfacing now. Some are new spammy links that perhaps are the result of previous automated processes that continue to propagate. And some may even be attempts at negative SEO. My point is that most sites that I have seen that needed to have disavow work done will need to continually update their disavow file.

Disavow tip: When you upload a new disavow file, you are COMPLETELY REWRITING your old file. If your old file has 300 domains in it and you want to add 30 new domains, your new file will have 330 domains in it.

In order to update your disavow file, you'll need to go to the disavow tool, select your site, select "disavow links" and again, "disavow links" and "download". I have no idea why, but Google will give you your file in the form of a .csv and not a .txt file. What I do next is copy column A and paste it in either TextEdit (on a Mac) or into a Google Doc. You can then add your new links and save the file as a .txt and file it as before.

When does the disavow start to work?

As soon as you upload your disavow file, Google will start to apply the disavow directives to each link of yours as they crawl the web. Let's say that I have a link on

http://www.spammysite.com/article.html

and I have disavowed

domain:spammysite.com

The next time that Google crawls http://www.spammysite.com/article.html, or any other page on this domain that links to you, they will apply an invisible nofollow tag to each link that points to your site. This means that these links will no longer be included in algorithmic calculations (i.e. Penguin) for your site. If your site is affected by the Penguin algorithm, you will not likely see changes right away. You will need to wait until Google reruns the Penguin algorithm and regathers information about your links. Google has hinted that soon this will happen continuously rather than on a sporadic basis. Hopefully this will mean that sites will be able to escape Penguin quicker. You'll still need to wait for Google to recrawl all of the links on your disavow file though. John Mueller from Google has said that it can take up to a year for all of your links to get recrawled. However, in my experiments, the longest a link took to be disavowed was three months. Most links were disavowed within a month.

Should you be removing links as well as disavowing?

This is a subject that deserves its own article. In fact, I have written a full article about this here. In general, if there is a link that I control, and I know I can easily remove it, then removing it is the best option. But, if you are dealing with an algorithmic issue such as Penguin, in my opinion, there is no need to go on an exhaustive email campaign to ask site owners to remove links. These campaigns are expensive and depending on the niche, the success rate is often very low. If you have a manual penalty, however, then yes, you need to make attempts to remove every unnatural link.

Can you reavow a link?

What if you made a mistake and included domains in your disavow file that were actually good links? You can remove a disavow directive by modifying your disavow file so that it no longer contains that domain and then re-uploading it. However, Matt Cutts commented earlier in the year that it takes much longer to reavow a link than to disavow it. You would think that the next time it was crawled, Google would remove the invisible "nofollow", however, there is some type of lag time built in before the link starts to count again. The purpose of this is to make it harder for spammers to find ways to cheat the system.

Questions?

You need to be careful when using the disavow tool. But, this doesn't mean that the average webmaster cannot use it. If you know you have low quality links pointing to your site, then this tool can be a good way to ask Google to not to count these links against you. Still, I have found that in over two years of helping people use this tool, questions often arise. If you have questions I'll do my best to answer. Or, if you have used the disavow tool and have hints to add, I'd love to hear your comments!


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By |December 16th, 2014|MOZ|0 Comments
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How You Can Build a Meaningful Brand

Posted by Hannah_Smith

Earlier this year I wrote a post about the future of marketing. In it, I made a handful of predictions; arguably the most 'out there' of which was this: in the future, only brands which 'mean something' to consumers will survive.

In today's post I'll be exploring what it takes to become a meaningful brand, and how you might go about building one.

SEO is not dead

Just so we're clear, I'm not saying SEO is dead, or that organic search is not an important channel :)
These stats speak for themselves:

However, what we're being asked to do as SEOs is constantly evolving.

It used to be that you could build a very successful business online just by being great at SEO. But today, the SERPs are changing, and ranking first doesn't mean what it used to:

The BBC still rank first organically for 'weather'—but their listing is pushed beneath the fold. Plus, given the that the information the searcher is seeking is displayed right there in the SERP, I'm guessing they're not receiving as much traffic from this term as they once were.

But it's not just informational queries:

Skyscanner still rank first for the term 'flights to paris', but again here their organic listing is pushed beneath the fold thanks to paid search listings and the proprietary Google flight product.

Google is even going so far as to show its proprietary products against branded searches (hat-tip to Barry Adams for pointing this out):

MoneySuperMarket's organic listing is above the fold, but Google is nonetheless being very aggressive.

As a consequence of these changes, as SEOs, we're being asked to do different things. Clients of yesteryear used to say things like:

Get us links!

But today they're saying things like:

Get us press coverage, social shares and exposure [links] on sites our target audience reads.

Whilst they may not explicitly be asking us to build a brand, nonetheless much of what we do today looks a lot like brand building. But where do we start?

What does 'brand' mean?

Before we kick off I think it's worth exploring what brand really means. We have a tendency to use 'brand' and 'company' or 'organisation' interchangeably, but in reality they are two distinctly different things.

Here's a definition:

brand - to impress firmly; fix ineradicably; place indelibly

Therefore a brand is not a brand unless it leaves a lasting impression, and of course, it needs to be a favourable impression. Essentially companies or organisations need to build brands that mean something to people.

However, right now companies and organisations are struggling to do this effectively:

"In Europe and the US, consumers would not care if 92% of brands ceased to exist"
~ source

That means that consumers would only miss 8% of brands.

Clearly we have a mountain to climb. How do we go about building meaningful brands? Particularly on SEO retainer budgets?

You can learn a lot by deconstructing the success of others

Like many in the search industry, I'm a fan of taking stuff apart to figure out how it works. So, when trying to figure out how to go about building a meaningful brand, I started by looking at what meaningful brands are doing right now.

I uncovered three core principles—some meaningful brands do all three; some just do one or two—I'll deal with them each in turn.

1) Meaningful brands find opportunities to delight customers

Most people's interactions with brands suck. But great interactions stand out and are shared. Let's take a look at some examples:

@smartcarusa

Here's how @smartcarusa responded when someone suggested that a single bird dropping would total one of their cars:

Now the takeaway here is not to rush out and make a bunch of infographics on disparate topics.
Out of context, the infographic is neither remarkable, nor particularly interesting, and I don't think it would have garnered coverage had it not been created in response to this tweet.
But I think a lesson we can take from this is that going the extra mile to respond in a novel way can yield out-sized returns.

@ArgosHelpers

This is how @ArgosHelpers responded to a customer asking when PS4s would be back in stock:

The takeaway here is not people love brands who use slang—I think this is actually a very artfully worded response. See how the brand has taken care to use the same language as their customer without being in any way condescending? That's what you need to shoot for.

@TescoMobile

This is how @TescoMobile responded when someone described their network as a 'turn off':

Whoa!

The lesson here is definitely not 'be a dick to people who are dicks to you'; I think the lesson here is that a well-judged, cheeky response can travel.

Ultimately you need to tread carefully if you want to use this type of tactic. I think @TescoMobile got away with this one—but it is really close to the line. To do this sort of thing you need to have a deep understanding of your audience—what's considered funny and what's just plain rude? This can vary hugely depending on the niche you're working in and the public perception of your brand.

Moreover, if you're a brand engaging in this sort of activity, you need to consider not only your own response, but the potential response from your audience, too. Some brands have an army of loyal advocates. But if brands aren't careful, they may unwittingly encourage said army to attack an individual with a response like this.

Of course it's not just interactions that have the capacity to delight—sometimes being nimble is enough:

@Arbys

When Pharrell turned up to the GRAMMYs wearing *that hat* here's how @Arbys responded:

The takeaway here is not that you need a bit of luck, instead it's that you need to be ready, willing and able to take advantage of opportunities as and when they arise. I think that if @Arbys hadn't tweeted that, then someone else would have done and their brand wouldn't have benefited.

Hopefully you can see where I'm going with this; let's move on to principle two:

2) Meaningful brands give people the ability to define themselves to others

Have you ever thought about why you share what you share on social media? Most of us don't think about it too much, but The New York Times did a study on the psychology of sharing in which 68% of respondents said they share things via social media to give others a better sense of who they are and what they care about.

For example, I might share an article from hbr.org because I want you to think I'm the sort of person who reads Harvard Business Review. Or I might share an Oatmeal comic because I want you to think I have an excellent sense of humour. I might share something about the Lean In movement because I want to let you know where I stand on important issues.

If you're seeking to create a meaningful brand, this can be an excellent space to play in because brands can give people the ability to define themselves to others. Now I don't necessarily mean by creating content like this which literally allows people to define themselves:

Brands can also help people define themselves by creating things people 'look good' sharing—let's take a look at some examples:

GE's #6SecondScience

The takeaway here is to create things which are tangentially related to your brand, that people 'look good' sharing. When people shared this content they were sharing stuff that was more than just 'cool'—by sharing this content they were also able to express their enthusiasm for science.

In a similar vein meaningful brands create commercials that don't feel like commercials—again, these are things that people 'look good' sharing:

Wren's First Kiss

This film definitely got people talking. To date it's received over 94 million YouTube views and coverage on over 1300 sites. But this isn't just a video content play...

Oreo

When Oreo turned 100, they created 100 pieces of content over 100 days:

This campaign got over 1m Facebook 'likes' and thousands of pieces of press coverage.

But actually, I think the smartest thing about this campaign was that it was highly topical content which put the cookie right in the centre of people's conversations without being self-serving.

Still with me? Let's move on to principle three:

3) Meaningful brands stand for something above and beyond their products or services

This is difficult to explain in the abstract, so I'm going to shoot straight to some examples.

BrewDog

BrewDog is a craft beer company. Their brand values are drawn from punk subculture—they're anti-establishment and believe in individual freedom.
So when Dead Pony Club ale was 'banned' because the phrase "rip it up down empty streets" was printed on the label, their response was to issue a press release apologising for 'not giving a shit' over the marketing rules breach.
Their fans loved their response:

The takeaway here isn't that sweary press releases get attention (although they undoubtedly do)—by refusing to take the ruling lying down BrewDog showed people they were a brand which stood for something beyond great beer.

Nike

A core value for Nike is "if you have a body, you are an athlete", and these values have inspired incredible creative like this:

I think that this advert is powerful because Nike isn't talking about how their trainers enhance your performance, they're talking about celebrating everyone's athletic endeavours. It's about more than just their products.

OKCupid

I think that taking the decision to stand for something is perhaps most potent when it could actually cost a brand customers. When Mozilla appointed a new CEO, OKCupid showed this message to Firefox users:

They went on to say:

The takeaway here is not 'align your brand with a cause and win the the Internet', but rather, taking a bold stance on a relevant issue, even if it could actually hurt your business, can create a lasting impression.

What do I mean by 'actually hurt your business'? Sadly, not everyone believes in equal rights for gay couples, as such, taking this stance could cost OK Cupid.

Using these principles day-to-day

The reality for me is that right now, much of this I can't affect—sadly no clients have dropped several million into my lap and asked me to create them an ad like Nike's :)

That said, I do think that it's helped me to clarify my thinking on what it means to be a meaningful brand and how to figure out how to get there. At Distilled (the company who is good enough to employ me), the place we play most frequently is principle two—we create content which allows people to define themselves to others; things that people 'look good sharing'.

Perhaps more importantly, we're taking the time to understand the companies we're working with better so that our creative work is better aligned with their brand values.

And so, dear reader, over to you—I'd love to hear what you think it takes to build a meaningful brand, and what's working (and not working) for you, do let me know via the comments.

This post is based on a session I presented at SearchLove; those who are interested can view the full deck below:


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By |December 15th, 2014|MOZ|0 Comments
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